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Seattle Seahawks

Geno Smith on his unlikely journey: ‘My tough times would be a dream to someone else’

Seattle Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith looks for an open receiver against the Dallas Cowboys in the first quarter a preseason game at AT&T Stadium on Aug. 26, 2022, in Arlington, Texas.   (Tribune News Service)
By Bob Condotta Seattle Times

RENTON, Wash. – On Wednesday, coach Pete Carroll pointed out that among the tasks Geno Smith assumed when he became the starting quarterback of the Seahawks was also becoming something of a public face of the franchise.

“He has to talk to you guys,” Carroll said to the media. “He has to talk to the world as the guy in the position now.”

Smith has performed that job, Carroll said, at the same MVP-level he has quarterbacked the team on the field.

“He’s handled himself so well,” Carroll said. “He has been so humble, respectful, and on point – creative and insightful. He has been all of that in handling this.”

A day later, Smith proved the worth of Carroll’s words with a few words of his own that went viral, and far more important, seemed to strike an emotional chord with the many who read them.

The topic was Smith’s unlikely journey to NFL stardom at age 32, something that often arises during Smith’s weekly meetings with the media, which he holds each Thursday at the team’s practice facility at the VMAC in Renton.

Russell Wilson also met the media in the auditorium at the VMAC each Thursday, and when Smith assumed the starting job, he took over Wilson’s platform on the podium.

With each passing week, Smith’s past – seven years as a backup from 2015, when he lost the starting job with the New York Jets, to winning the Seattle job this year – has become a popular topic.

At one point in a wide-ranging news conference Thursday during which Smith spoke more than 2,500 words, he was asked how he handled his time as a backup, left to wonder if he’d get another chance to start.

Smith said he knew he had to learn patience and believe that things would again eventually all work out.

Was that tough, Smith was asked?

“I can’t say it was tough because I have been so blessed,” he said. “Honestly, my tough times would be a dream to someone else. I never will look at it as something that was too hard for me or really tough because throughout that time, I was still enjoying my life and still in the NFL. For the most part, it was just feeling like there was a glass ceiling and you want to break that ceiling. It’s like something hovering over you that you just want to break, so you can continue to grow further. For me, I just had to stay patient until I had the opportunity.”

A tweet containing the phrase “my tough times would be a dream to someone else” quickly caught fire, getting almost 27,000 likes as of early Friday, and was picked up by basically every media outlet that covers the league, such as ESPN and Fox Sports.

“Geno Smith respect” followed by a hand-clap emoji, Fox Sports’ NFL account tweeted to its 3.2 million followers.

Former NFL receiver Chad Johnson retweeted it to his 3.2 million followers with simply a gem emoji.

ESPN NFL reporter Mina Kimes, also a self-professed Seattle sports fan, tweeted it to her 817,000 followers with: “Things we’ve learned this year: Geno Smith gives great quote.”

Kimes then followed up with another tweet of Smith’s statement after the overtime loss to the Raiders about being a thumb-pointer instead of a finger-pointer and that he would look at himself first to assess any blame.

Among others who liked the tweet was Anna Wilson, the younger sister of the man Smith replaced as Seattle’s quarterback.

But if any of how Smith has handled this season is a revelation to outsiders – and to be fair, since Smith was not in the limelight the past seven years, there wasn’t much of a recent body of work for anyone outside of the Seahawks organization to go on – Carroll said it’s just a reflection of what he showed during his three seasons backing up Wilson.

“He hasn’t changed,” Carroll said. “He’s just doing what he always did.”

And what the team saw behind the scenes undoubtedly played into the confidence Carroll showed in Smith throughout the offseason – namely, naming him as No. 1 on the depth chart and leaving him there. That was a tactic some questioned, wondering why there didn’t appear to be more of an open competition with Drew Lock, acquired in the Wilson trade, even if Carroll insisted the team was giving Lock as fair of a look at it was giving Smith.

But Smith’s leadership and popularity with teammates was something quietly talked about by some in the organization as factors in why the team felt he deserved to be given the mantle of starter heading into the offseason program and training camp.

And while Smith makes clear he thought he could have – if not should have – been a starter all along, his words also make clear that maybe there was some value in having to travel the unlikely road he did, becoming the first quarterback in more than 50 years to go eight years between opening-day starts.

“All of the things that we go through in life, we really embrace them,” Smith said. “They all become lessons. In that time when I felt like I should’ve been out there, I really wanted to be out there, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t put myself out there. So I had to learn that patience, and learn how to continue to work, and continue to be confident, and not worry about things outside of my control. What I learned is, when you don’t focus on negativity, and stay positive, and work, sometimes things happen.”