It's been a rough few weeks for Geno Smith. He received a predictably scathing scouting report from Pro Football Weekly, he dropped to the second round in the NFL draft, and then parted ways with his agents after it was decided that they didn't serve him all that well leading up to the draft. So now it's time to pile on.
For some reason, Yahoo's Jason Cole decided to give a few anonymous NFL executives a platform from which to unnecessarily throw more dirt on Smith. He got some "juicy" quotes about how Smith just doesn't seem to "get it."
"His biggest problem is that he doesn't know what he doesn't know," said a league executive, who spent extensive time assessing Smith before the draft. "I'm not sure he knows how to take instruction because he pretty much wouldn't listen or talk to our coaches … he's talented. He can sling it, he can fit it into tight spots, he can do a lot of things and I think he wants to be good. But you can't tell him anything right now. He's tuned out because he thinks he's got it all down."
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"He doesn't have much presence, not much of a leader," said another league executive, who spent a great deal of time studying Smith before the draft. "I don't think he's a bad person, but that's not enough to be a quarterback in this league."
Two sources indicated that when Smith went on some visits to teams, rather than interact with coaches and front-office people, he would spend much of his time on his cell phone. Instead of being engaged with team officials, he would be texting friends or reading Twitter or a number of other distracting activities.
"All these other players who were in there were talking to the coaches, trying to get to know people and he was over there by himself," one of the sources said. "That's not what you want out of your quarterback."
Text messaging and looking at Twitter? The nerve! It's almost as if he's a millennial.
It's not surprising to hear these kinds of assessments of Smith from stodgy NFL execs, but it's not really clear why this article was written in the first place. Cole seems to be trying to use these quotes to chip away at the fact that Smith's camp has stated that he didn't fire his agents for one particular reason, and reveal that he actually did fire his agents just because he was mad that he didn't get drafted number one overall. This makes Smith petulant, or something
But, like, who gives a shit? The draft is over, Smith is a Jet, and he decided to switch agencies—which is a thing that football players do all the time. Why does any of this need to be discussed? This entire Yahoo article is a gigantic waste of time.
[Yahoo]