The Las Vegas Raiders were largely applauded for trading a third-round pick in exchange for quarterback Geno Smith this offseason. Not only is he coming off a career-best 4,320 passing yards, but he is reuniting with head coach Pete Carroll in Las Vegas.
Smith enjoyed a career resurgence under Carroll in 2022, when he earned the NFL Comeback Player of the Year award. He also put together back-to-back Pro Bowl campaigns in 2022 and 2023 before taking a step back without Carroll last season.
However, not everyone is a huge fan of Smith and what he'll bring for the Silver and Black. The general consensus has been that he is an upper-tier quarterback, with many in Raider Nation believing that he could even be considered a top 10 player at the position. ESPN's Mike Clay, however, has him ranked shockingly low.
Geno Smith continues to be disrespected by the media
On Thursday, Clay released his projections for the 2025 NFL season, and of course, he was unkind to the Raiders. While his statistical predictions and positional rankings claim to be based in analytics, they feel a bit more like biased opinions.
Clay slotted Geno Smith in as the 24th-ranked quarterback in the NFL. This meant that he was last in the AFC West by a large margin, considering Patrick Mahomes was No. 6, Bo Nix was No. 10 and Justin Herbert came in at No. 12
While Raiders fans are no supporter of Mahomes, he is obviously not outside of the league's top five quarterbacks. This ranking is also null and void automatically because Nix and Mahomes are being held in roughly the same breath.
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Not only was Smith far too low, but he was ranked behind unproven commodities like J.J. McCarthy and Justin Fields, who came in at No. 14 and No. 11. They also have both Brock Purdy and Bryce Young ranked ahead a bit ahead of Smith, both of which could be at least argued.
Smith will be playing in one of the NFL's toughest divisions this season, but he has a plethora of talent to work with. Elite players like Brock Bowers and Ashton Jeanty should make his job easier, and Jakobi Meyers and an exciting young receiver corps could end up helping out a ton as well.
With a better offensive line and offensive coordinator in Las Vegas this year, it should surprise nobody to see Smith have the best season of his career. Time will tell if these projections are correct, but Smith has surprised people before. They're still writing Geno off, but it's a good thing he doesn't write back.