Las Vegas Raiders fans quickly grew tired of Geno Smith during the 2025 NFL season, and even more so with Pete Carroll's inability to hold him accountable. It seemed like with every bad decision Smith made or every time the veteran quarterback was criticized, Carroll dug his heels in even further.
Between taking too many sacks, throwing too many interceptions, failing to see open receivers and missing open targets for potentially game-altering plays, it was pretty much all bad for Smith in Las Vegas. Was it all his fault? Certainly not; the offense was a disaster. But he absolutely played his role.
How, then, does Pro Football Focus come out with a study that proves that Smith was actually the unluckiest quarterback in the NFL during the 2025 season? Well, the answer to that is simple: The study doesn't paint the full picture of how Smith made his own luck last season, or lack thereof.
PFF labeling Geno Smith "unluckiest quarterback" in 2025 doesn't paint full picture for Las Vegas Raiders fans
PFF's algorhythm is simple: "Luck" is determined by how many "non-turnover-worthy plays" resulted in interceptions. By this metric, Smith had the worst net luck in the NFL last season, as five of his non-turnover-worthy plays did, in fact, result in turnovers.
"The ugliest interception total in football during the 2025 season was largely driven by variance. Smith recorded 18 turnover-worthy throws — hardly an extreme figure relative to his volume — but 12 of them became interceptions, producing a 66.7% conversion rate that sat nearly 18 percentage points above the league average.Â
"The bad luck didn’t stop there. Smith also threw five interceptions on non-turnover-worthy plays, well above the roughly 3.4 expected based on league-average rates. Altogether, his 17-interception season paints a far harsher picture than the underlying process suggests. Under league-average interception luck, Smith’s season profiles far more like a 12- or 13-interception campaign than the 17 interceptions attached to his name in the official record."
First, it should be noted that turnover worthy plays are completely subjective, and in this study, they completely left out non-passing turnover worthy plays, so Smith's four fumbles were also not accounted for. And fans know that his number of turnover worthy plays was much more than 18.
But the funny thing is that PFF also knows this. According to their own data set, Smith actually had 23 turnover worthy plays in 2025, the seventh-most in the league, and he didn't even play in every game. His turnover worthy play percentage was fourth-highest among QBs who played in 10+ contests.
All of that said, let's go back to the numbers PFF provided us with in their study. They neglect to point out that Smith still had the most turnovers in the NFL on turnover worthy plays in 2025, which makes it hard to justify that he had "bad luck." 12 to 13 interceptions isn't exactly some great campaign.
Plus, through their formula, Smith isn't adequately punished for the consequences of his own actions, which is the amount of turnover worthy plays that turned into turnovers. He's only given a reprieve when those passes are dropped and not held accountable when it results in a turnover.
Look, Raider Nation doesn't need advanced metrics to conclude that Smith was a disaster under center in Las Vegas. Did some tipped passes turn into interceptions, as he commonly pointed out in press conferences so as to avoid blame? Yes.
The flip side of that coin, though, is that this luck metric doesn't factor in all of the other mind-boggling mistakes and ill-advised plays that he made. Certainly, it is an interesting study, but it feels like they missed the mark if they think Smith was the unluckiest quarterback in the NFL last year.
Smith made his own luck in Las Vegas, which was none at all. Just ask Carroll or anyone in the building last year: They sure don't feel lucky that they attached themselves to Smith's wagon.
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