There is no structural damage in the elbow.
Pete Carroll and the rest of the Seattle Seahawks coaching staff will decide whether or not to start Geno Smith on Thursday night.
“We’ll observe the outcome. Two days prior to the Seahawks’ pivotal NFC West rivalry game against San Francisco, Smith stated on Tuesday, “That’s up to coach.”
After taking a hard hit from Aaron Donald when he released a pass late in the third quarter of last Sunday’s game against the Los Angeles Rams, Smith left the game in the second half. Smith’s right arm, just below the elbow, developed a contusion at the base of his triceps.
During the first two drives of the fourth quarter, Smith sat and Drew Lock took command. However, Smith came back for the Seahawks’ last drive, setting them up for a field goal, but Jason Myers missed a 55-yard field goal in the final seconds.
No structural damage was present. Just pain and edema. However, Smith claimed that upon returning for the last drive, the pain was severe.
Smith described the situation as “pretty difficult, in a lot of pain, but just tried to go out there and do my best.”
Despite finishing 22 of 34 for 233 yards and one touchdown in the Rams game, Smith’s decision-making appeared to be more of an issue following the game than his arm injury.
In particular, there were concerns about Smith’s decision to use Zach Charbonnet on a run play in the final seconds. With 23 seconds remaining, Smith hit DK Metcalf to get to the Rams 39-yard line. Rather than spike the ball to stop the clock or call a pass play, Smith chose to go with a run to Charbonnet. With only 2 yards gained on the play, Myers was left with a long shot to win the game.
The fact that Smith had to make the play call at the line of scrimmage quickly and his helmet’s headset wasn’t working added to the difficulty of the situation. Smith stated that while outages do occur occasionally, the timing of this particular one was not ideal.
“We believed that we had called the play correctly, and we could have gained additional yards.” didn’t quite go as planned, but that’s something we still need to work on improving,” Smith remarked. “I feel good about what we did and I think I made sound decisions overall.”
Lock played only a few snaps, one of which ended with an interception at the conclusion of his second drive. This season, Lock had come in for a brief stint twice while Smith was recovering from an injury; this was something Lock had done a few times in his last season in Denver.
Although being the starter is by far the hardest position, Lock claimed that coming off the bench at any time presents its own special set of difficulties.
“There are just a lot of things that are more than just calling a play into a huddle and running it.” Lock remarked, “You have to shape yourself to fit the genre of the game. There are a thousand different scenarios that can arise.”