The Las Vegas Raiders dropped a brutal 20-9 primetime game against the Los Angeles Chargers in Week 2. Veteran quarterback Geno Smith had an awful performance, completing just 55.8% of his 43 passes for 180 yards and three interceptions.
While these numbers look bad on the surface, watching the game was even more painful because Smith looked like a shell of himself. It should come as no surprise, then, that the advanced statistics and analytics were not kind to Smith either.
But these facts are presented for the sole purpose of explaining just how bad a performance Smith put together, and how close the Raiders still were in a game against a true contender. Smith will certainly bounce back, as these stats indicate that it could not have been much worse.
Geno Smith's brutal performance should not discourage Raiders
For starters, the Chargers' defense is incredible under Jesse Minter. They're forcing an average depth of target of just 3.2 yards, which is the lowest in the NFL by a significant margin. Their ability to force quarterbacks into ill-advised decisions was on full display against both Smith and Patrick Mahomes.
Their secondary coverage was so good that Smith was often forced to hold onto the ball, which caused throwaways on fourth down like this, and passes into double coverage that resulted in a player getting their first interception since 2018.
Tony Jefferson, who picked off the pass, actually retired and was working as a scout a few years ago. This made the play sting even worse, and after Smith's third interception, Raiders fans actually began leaving the stadium.
But these are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how bad Smith played on Monday Night Football. To start with, he was 0-for-12 on passes of more than 10+ air yards, according to Next Gen Stats. This made him the only quarterback since 2016 to throw over 10 such passes and not complete even one.
In Week 1, Smith threw for 219 yards on passes of more than 10 yards, but against the Chargers, he had 0. To make matters more puzzling, Smith was an efficient 24-for-29 for 180 yards on passes of less than 10 yards, which begs the question of why he kept pushing it downfield.
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As a result of Monday's game, in which Smith recorded a 37.0 QB rating, he now leads the league with four interceptions, and the Raiders' signal-caller has the worst QB rating in the league. Both Pro Football Focus and Next Gen Stats ripped his performance apart as well.
According to PFF, Smith's 40.0 grade was the worst on the Raiders' offense. If not for a few solid scrambles that netted him a 75.9 grade as a runner, he may have fared closer to his 34.4 mark as a passer.
Next Gen Stats also indicated that Smith had the lowest average completed air yards in the league, and he completed almost 10% less of the passes than he should have. His aggression rate was too high as well, throwing nearly 28% of his passes into aggressive windows as opposed to just 17.6% last week.
EPA is one of the most highly esteemed metrics in the NFL landscape, as it is a measure of roughly how many expected points a player is adding on a per-play basis. Unfortunately, Smith ranks 31st out of 34 qualifying quarterbacks, according to this stat, through the first two weeks.
Suffice it to say, Smith could not have played much worse for the Raiders in Week 2 against the Chargers. It seems like every stat that comes out adds another bad layer to this performance, but fortunately, Las Vegas has a mentally tough veteran under center.
Smith should rebound in a major way against the Washington Commanders in Week 3, as he plays his best when he is backed into a corner. Raider Nation knows not to write Geno Smith off.