Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll stopped short of saying “let Geno cook” during a Monday radio appearance, but he did signal that the team is going to give quarterback Geno Smith more of a hand in the team’s offense.
Carroll said “we haven’t had many easy drives” over the first two weeks of the season during an appearance on KIRO. Carroll thinks the team can make drives easier by “converting some bigger plays” to the likes of DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett, which means putting more on Smith’s shoulders and Carroll said he believes the quarterback is up to the task.
“We don’t need to hold him back at all. I think Geno’s got his game ready to go,” Carroll said. “We need to trust him and we need to maybe give him a few more opportunities and stuff. We’ve been pretty solidly conservative, counting on running the football, and when we didn’t run the football then OK, we didn’t have much of a mix that we needed. We can do better with that. And whether that’s right or wrong, that’s not the point. The point is that we need to keep expanding. We have too many explosive avenues to go to and we’ve got to make sure that these guys show up.”
The Seahawks have run the fewest offensive plays and scored the third-fewest points in the league through the first two weeks. That’s not a winning combination and Smith will have to do more if Seattle’s going to start moving in the right direction against the Falcons in Week Three.