Note: Goal of this isn’t to pass judgment on if Smith is “good” or “bad.” Rather, it’s diving into his stats and the incentives that are tied to his performance as we enter the back “half” of the season.
The Contract
As we all know, Geno Smith agreed to a relatively unique contract structure this offseason that was heavily incentive laden. Specifically, he has the following 5 performance escalators associated to his 2022 performance:
- Wins - 9
- Passing Yards - 4,282
- Passing Touchdowns - 30
- Completion % - 69.8
- Passer Rating - 100.9
Hitting any escalator adds an additional $2m to his 2024 salary, and hitting all 5 awards an additional $5m bonus for a total incentives package worth $15m. He has a guaranteed salary of $31.2m bringing his total potential 2024 salary to $46m.
I dive into each in more detail below but based on his performance to date, here’s how things would shake out:
- Wins: On pace, seems likely he’ll get 9 wins.
- Passing Yards: Behind pace, but not impossible to catch up.
- Passing Touchdowns: Behind pace, but not impossible to catch up.
- Completion %: Behind pace, unlikely to catch up.
- Passer Rating: Behind pace, unlikely to catch up.
The Incentives in Detail
Wins
This is the easiest one, heading into Week 11, SEA is sitting at 6-3 and would need to finish with no worse than a 3-5 record to trigger this escalator. While the last 8 games are certainly the hardest, it would still be extremely difficult to miss this so fair to say he’ll see this $2m.
Passing Yards
Currently Smith is sitting at 2171 yards on the season for an average of 241 yards/gm. However, the escalator required 251 yards/gm and were he to continue at this pace for the remainder of the season he’d fall 181 yards short with 4101 yards.
To make up the gap, over the next games he would need average at least 264 yards per game. In the modern NFL this number, by itself, isn’t exactly eye-watering but the complication is he would need to do this for 8 straight games. In 26 regular season games in SEA he’s done it a total of 12 times with the longest stretch being 5 games straight (Weeks 9-14.) So not impossible but it would require a significant and sustained improvement.
Passing TDs
After Sunday, Smith is now at 11 TDs a game, good for 1.2/game and 21 total if that trend continues. That would put him at 9 behind his 2022 total of 30.
Again, to close the gap, his productivity will need to almost double to 2.3 TDs a game to hit 30. How he’ll get 1/3 TDs a game is beyond me, but this is easily the both the biggest gap and the one that could be one that breaks back in his favor if his play improves. He’s scored 2+ TDs in 4 games this season and a whopping 12 last season; one or 3+ TDs would put him back on track quickly.
Completion%
You know the drill: 64.9% in 2023 vs. 69.8% in 2022. To get that average up to 69.8 he’d need a 75.4% completion% through the remainder of the season. And while completion% has gone up this year and Smith has gone gone above 75% multiple times that’s also a very high bar to reach for 8 games straight.
Passer Rating
Similar to Completion%, he finished the season with a 100.9 rating in 2022 but is at 88.6 on the season so far. To catch up to that he’d need to receive a weekly passer rating of 116.3. For comparison, the next closest player is Brock Purdy with a 109 rating on the season and, historically, the guys who have had seasons in the 116+ range are (almost) all HoFers/future-HoFers. If he catches up it would simply because he plays at an MVP level to close out the year.
If there’s any errors in my math please free to check my work and let me know!
It’s the passing volume incentives that make me concerned he might get pass happy and we won’t run the ball enough in the final weeks if he’s close to a goal.