There have been some twists and turns to the Raiders first training camp with Pete Carroll, but one of the biggest surprises in recent weeks has been the indecision around Jackson Powers-Johnson’s role in the offense.
As of Thursday, Powers-Johnson is still splitting reps with Alex Cappa, who managed to stay in competition for the job despite missing more than a week with a rib injury.
But when asked on Thursday for his biggest surprise of training camp, the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Vinny Bonsignore offered a different storyline.
“I think [Geno Smith] is just a huge difference maker for this team… I knew coming in, you just look at the numbers and you watch the tape, yeah, this guy is pretty darn good [and] is going to offer an upgrade at quarterback,” Bonsignore said on Raider Nation Radio’s Morning Tailgate.
“It’s not until you see it day in and day out at practice that you realize how good he really is. I didn’t know he was this good. I’m surprised about how **** good this guy is. That’s what I’m saying.”
Smith was not the first quarterback the Raiders pursued in the offseason, but according to Carroll, Smith was the quarterback he wanted from the day he was hired in Las Vegas.
”I was trying to get that done from the moment this thing happened,” Carroll said in May. “I was hoping we could do something [to get Geno Smith].”
The Raiders pursued Matthew Stafford before Smith, but there is reason to believe the team wasn’t willing to give up any more for Stafford than they did for Smith.
After Stafford announced he was returning to the Rams, the Raiders quickly pivoted to Smith and Bonsignore acknowledged in May what he initially thought about the trade.
“It’s interesting because I got a little bit of a heads up, Friday morning, the day of the trade for Geno Smith. I got a text,” Bonsignore said on Raiders Nation Radio’s JT the Brick Show.
“I was literally sitting right here, hosting the morning show, and it was from somebody in the NFL that said, ‘Hey, keep an eye on Geno Smith getting traded to the Raiders, it’s going to happen sometime this weekend.’ And I was like, ‘Geno Smith, is that really an upgrade?’”
From the outside, it seems like Smith has won over just about everyone around the team, and the challenge now will be turning an encouraging offseason into wins on the field.
x: @raidersbeat
We aren’t going to win anything with Smith, he might look decent in practice but the man’s going to be 35 early this season. The Raiders need to save their high draft picks and find a legit QB next year or we will just be spinning our wheels wasting Maxx best years. Smith will play just well enough to drop us out of the top 10 in the draft. Smith is rated as the 18th best QB and could be as low as 22nd. Our main concern should be QB because without that we won’t even sniff the playoffs.
PFF said this:
• 2025 (new tiering): PFF moved him into **Tier 3a—“solid starters who have flashed high-end play,” ranking him as the 10th-best quarterback in the NFL. In the AFC West, he ranked behind only Patrick Mahomes and Justin Herbert.
Now you may not put much stock in PFF, but they do the research and aren’t prone to hyperbole. Whether Smith deserves this ranking or not we’ll soon find out.
Smith will only be an upgrade if the OL is solid, and that we won’t know until the regular season. Last year Smith was an INT machine due to playing behind a weak OL. We’re basically returning the same starters as last year, just different coaches, but we’ll see if the line does a 180.