✈️ Jets Air Traffic Report Week 3: Geno Smith’s stat line doesn’t tell the whole story

In football, when your quarterback goes 31 of 37 for 321 yards with three touchdowns and no interceptions, you'd expect to win. However, that wasn't the case for Geno Smith and the New York Jets on Sunday, when the quarterback posted that stat line in a 31-24 loss to the Detroit Lions.

Through the first three games this season, Smith has completed 77 of 102 passes for a total of 783 yards, adding four touchdowns, and has yet to throw a single interception. For a man who has long been known for his gunslinger ways and the league leader in interceptions tossed just last year, this kind of early-season efficiency feels like something of a fever dream to most watching.

In Detroit, likely his best game yet, the production came despite being without three pass catchers that the Jets began the season with in Adonai Mitchell, Omar Cooper Jr., and Mason Taylor, and with no help from a running game that never truly took off.

Is Geno Smith holding back the Jets' offense?

My Week 1 report praised Smith's conservative approach to the air as a beautiful sight for the sore eyes of Jets fans who had become so jaded watching their quarterbacks struggle to complete passes to anyone but the other team.

The report last week questioned why it seemed like new offensive coordinator Frank Reich was using the 'dummies guide to throwing the football' with a quarterback who is now 9th all time in passing yards in Jets history.

Through three weeks, however, it's starting to look like the picture may be less about the team or Reich, and more about Smith's own personal rebirth journey or an Aaron Glenn dictatorship of conservatism.

For the third week in a row against the Lions, Smith's checkdown rate was egregious. 23 of his 31 completions came either on checkdowns or first-read/short-throw targets.

To immediately exonerate Reich from blame, 21 of Smith's 38 pass attempts were play calls with deep-step drops (five-step, seven-step, long play action). For anyone confused by the point, that means that Reich continued to dial up plays meant for long throws just for Smith to choose the shortest throw.

To me, this is a blatant sign that either Geno is regularly bailing Reich out of bad play calls or, more likely, that Glenn has crossed over into this area of the Jets' playbook to preach an "always play it safe" approach that has effectively become the lone voice in Smith's head.

Are Aaron Glenn, Frank Reich, and Geno Smith disconnected?

While fans may be more than pleased with how the air attack has gone for the Jets so far, I personally cannot help but see a disconnected love triangle that either pits Glenn and Smith against Reich or a version wherein Smith is on his own spiritual journey to overcorrect his aggressive past.

My Exhibit B in my fight to absolve Reich and point an accusation in the way of Glenn, but ultimately Smith, is the speed at which he is deciding to throw safe routes.

While I'm sure advanced analytics would support it, Smith's internal clock, a mechanism that every quarterback has, is undeniably sped up so far this season.

He regularly throws checkdowns in the face of no immediate pressure; his eyes are either darting far too fast away from deep zones or, in some cases, never even get there, and the reason his mobility is a shell of what it's been has less to do with him being 35 and more to do with the fact that he isn't doing anything confidently, including making the decision to run.

Could the Jets turn to newly signed Will Levis?

For anyone reading this as being nothing more than an overly critical take by a wounded Jets fan, I'll propose a new wrinkle -- why did the Jets just sign Will Levis? Some early reports suggested it may have been in response to a possible Geno injury, but typically teams don't cut a quarterback (Bailey Zappe) just to bring in a different one when the reason is simply security.

My conspiracy is that there is a looming fog of terror above the Jets' pass game. Smith is afraid of blowing this second chance and is refusing to throw the ball beyond 10 yards. Cade Klubnik is a rookie scared of being exposed to the question, "Why did your college career dip off so drastically?" and Glenn is petrified of squandering his moment as a first-time head coach with his beloved team.

Perhaps it's worth considering that bringing in Levis, who, in his short time in the NFL, has been touted as a reckless thrower of the football, may be a strategy the Jets are deploying to push Smith's confidence.

The way I see it, either offering Levis some second-team reps results in an explosion of proof that this offense is built for home runs, or Smith is reminded through Levis that a few interceptions won't start the dumpster fire of trauma that he remembers from Las Vegas.

Analytics are not football

There is a game within a game. In fact, there are several games happening within games. All at once, and all as influential to the big picture as the next.

Isolated, the story the data tells from Sunday is that Smith overcame numerous obstacles to deliver a masterful performance that, had it not been for everything that was working against him, would have single-handedly won the Jets the game.

However, as someone who played the position, my concern for what the little details suggest about Smith through three games continues to grow. The coup de grâce for me in this regard was the absurdity in how this game ended. After putting up a stat line worthy of flowers, Smith's fumble in the closing moments was the nail in the coffin of what ultimately became just another Jets loss.

To the naked eye, it's easy to offer Smith the benefit of the doubt because of his QBR, but what I saw in that moment was a veteran quarterback completely bungling the protection, snapping the ball with 17 seconds left on the play clock, hesitating to react to a totally untouched B gap pressure, and being cavalier with the ball with the game on the line.

If you're still not convinced that there's a problem, consider this

Ignore all the stats, and the history of Jets quarterback play, and even the tight final score, and ask yourself - based on this game alone, if you were given the choice of Smith or Jared Goff being the Jets' quarterback the rest of this season, who would you want?

If you picked Goff, I'm proud of you - acceptance is the first step to recovery. If you picked Smith, remember that denial is more than just a river in Egypt.

Overall Rating: 7.0 ⭐️

When you're coming out of a toxic relationship, stability looks like a dream. Six months into your new relationship with Mr. Vanilla, however, thoughts of forever can make you queasy. You won't dump him yet, but you certainly start to wonder how much longer you can last playing it safe.

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