OH, CANADA
The best way for Geno Smith to revive his NFL career is to go north and prove himself in the CFL
Geno Smith should invest in a Gore-Tex coat, pack a scarf and take his “talents” North of the Border to revive a career teetering on irrelevance here. The wayward free-agent quarterback’s best opportunity to prove that he actually can become the player he sees in the mirror lies in Canada, not the NFL, right now.
Smith’s weekend meeting with Giants brass prompted a hearty chuckle across the league. NFL teams are yearning to win the Geno Sweepstakes as much as they’re yearning to win a couple bucks in a scratch-off lotto ticket.
Smith might be the least equipped person to play in New York, an immature and insecure guy filled with self-delusion. His litany of missteps on and off the field for the past four years has been well-chronicled.
The reality is that New York is no place for a flawed, thin-skinned quarterback. Truth be told, no major market makes sense for Smith.
He was an embarrassment for the Jets. He would be the same for the Giants by saying or doing something stupid because, well, he’s currently a 26-year-old child.
His soundtrack has been predictable through the years. Screw up. Recite textbook mea culpas. Screw up again. Blame the media.
Smith boycotted reporters for a week during training camp last summer because he didn’t like the headline of a story chronicling the one-year anniversary of his locker room fight with a teammate that broke his jaw. (A member of the organization later lectured the reporter).
How ridiculous did the behindthe-scenes damage control get for Smith? A team official spent last year trying to repair Smith’s image to help his chances of landing a job elsewhere in free agency this offseason.
Smith, however, never changed his stripes. He whined behind closed doors. He even whined with a mini-tantrum on the sidelines after Ryan Fitzpatrick’s interception in the end zone in a primetime loss in Arizona in Week 6.
The pre-draft portrait of a mercurial guy unfit to be the leader of men turned out to be deadly accurate.
Smith even went so far as try to bully reporters. I witnessed him attempting to intimidate a member of the media in the locker room late last season. It was a pathetic display by a pathetic player unable to deal with his growing irrelevance.
It’s been a nauseating cycle for Smith, who is a legend in his own mind. The reality is that Smith is 12-18 as a starter in four seasons with 28 touchdowns and 43 turnovers. He’s won back-to-back games a grand total of one time in his career. He has committed at least one turnover in 80 percent of his career starts (24 of 30). He is one of the worst signal callers by nearly every statistical measure since entering the league.
Smith’s health has further clouded his future. He’s a long way away from being fully recovered from a torn ACL suffered in Week 7. It makes no sense for the Jets to bring him back for unofficially a million reasons, including his health and selfishness.
Imagine all the sideline tantrums and dumb things that would spill out of his mouth if Bryce Petty and/or Christian Hackenberg were struggling. Smith wants to play. He’s not exactly the mentoring type.
Smith revealed his goals a couple weeks ago in an NFL Network story when he laughably claimed that he’s shown that he can be “one of the best” in “glimpses.”
Smith will collect dust if/when he signs with a team this offseason. He hasn’t finished a game he started since 2014. He now claims that he’s gotten better “behind the scenes,” which means absolutely nothing.
The only way he can truly improve at this stage of his career is to maximize his playing time. That won’t happen in the NFL now, so it’d be smart for him to explore options in the CFL.
Vince Young took that path last week by signing with the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Smith should try to prove to everyone in the NFL that he can become a viable starter/leader by heading to Canada for a couple years.
If he succeeds with Toronto, Montreal or anywhere up north, he might have a chance to find success in the NFL. He’s still young enough to gain valuable experience in Canada and return to the NFL in his prime (if he’s actually good in the CFL).
Smith has a couple of smart personal advisors, but his agent, Kim Miale of Roc Nation, is nearly as lost as he is right now. She’s been an enabler rather than a valuable asset assessing his true value.
The laughably inexperienced Miale was assigned to Smith after the former West Virginia quarterback chose Roc Nation over experienced agents. She was actually his second representative; he fired his original agents after the draft, in part, because he slipped out of the first round.
Miale isn’t exactly the most tapped-in agent on the block. At a time when Smith could use a skilled representative to give him the lay of the land, the poor guy is listening to an agent who can’t properly provide valuable inside information about his options.
Geno Smith has been pushed to the margins. Maybe he can grow up in Canada and have a chance to salvage his career.