Establish the Fun: Geno Smith has been one of the NFL’s best QBs by any metric

It’s Week 6, my dudes.

(/screams)

Welcome back to Establish the Fun, where football is fun and we’re establishing that at record high levels at the moment. This is like, Sully on the scare floor of Monsters Inc. level of fun output right now.

We’re over a quarter of the way through the NFL season, and team identities are starting to be formed. NFL fans can notice trends of player performance and and personnel usage. Seeing the little things and highlighting player performance is what makes football fun, and since this is Establish the Fun, we’re going to highlight that!

Here are some players and team aspects you should be looking out for in Week Six:

Rocket arm QBs.

Game managers QBs.

Shanahan QBs.

Dual threat QBs.

Long ago, all QBs lived in harmony, until Patrick Mahomes attacked.

Only the Avatar, master of all four aspects of QB play, could defeat Mahomes.

That QB is Geno Smith.

Calling the Seahawks signal caller’s play in the beginning of the season a revelation might be an understatement. He’s simply been one of the best QBs in the entire NFL by any metric you want to mention. Composite EPA/play and CPOE? Only Mahomes and Josh Allen have been better. Average throw depth? Tied Tua Tagovailoa. Touchdowns? Tied with Joe Burrow for seventh in the entire league.

The throws that Smith is making aren’t easy completions either, yet he’s throwing with impeccable anticipation and timing into tight windows. According to Pro Football Focus, his big time throw rate of 6.4 percent leads the entire NFL, which means most of his passes are on the high end of PFF’s grading. Let’s take a look at his play against the New Orleans Saints and dissect how he’s become the Avatar.

This first throw is an example of an off platform throw that not many QBs in the league can make, and Smith is doing it at an extremely high level. A bootleg away from Smith’s passing arm side, and the Seahawks run a three level read: the out route by DK Metcalf, an over route by Lockett in the intermediate area, and a corner route by TE Noah Fant. It’s designed to take advantage of the flat defender in zone, but the Saints play man. On top of that, the EDGE to the boot side doesn’t bite on the run action.

Doesn’t even matter. Smith throws this off platform right in the bucket to Fant. That’s high level QB play. The torque he gets while running to his left, whew.

Let’s look at one of the long TD’s to Tyler Lockett. Smith motions Lockett to the other side of the formation. He notices the Saints “bump” their defense, a movement that moves the linebackers and not the defensive back, often meaning zone defense. Smith makes an audible.

At the snap, DK Metcalf runs a burst route, kind of a rounded off corner route, and Lockett runs a post. Metcalf’s route takes away the corner to his side, but only slightly moves the safety. If Smith is going to throw it to Lockett, it has to be perfect.

And buddy, it was.

My favorite throw of the game might have been on an incompletion in the red zone. The Saints are running Quarters coverage, with four deep defenders. A play that commonly beats Quarters and is run in the red zone is Dino, or double post. The inside receiver runs a post, which the safety has to run with, leaving the corner one on one with the receiver and no inside help.

However, it’s on the QB to move the safety with the inside post and throw the outside post with good timing, especially in the red zone where there’s a finite amount of space. If DK catches this pass, it’s another TD for Smith. But I love the process and the timing on this throw.

Smith and the Seahawks take on the Cardinals on Sunday, and if one thing is sure this season for Seattle, Smith and the Seahawks offense is going to be firing on all cylinders. Smith has become the Avatar; in control of all elements of QB play, and it’s a joy to watch.

What’s one thing the Bills and Francis Ngannou have in common?

Both are heavyweights in their respective sport that can absolutely obliterate you with the haymakers. Ngannou does it with his fists; the Bills have Josh Allen.

This haymaker offense was on display to the tune of shredding the Steelers 38-3 and putting up video game numbers such as:

Yeah, that’s a first down EVERY PLAY! Forget Francis Ngannou, this is the Mishima dragon uppercut!

The Bills are currently third in big passing plays according to Hosted Stats, which measures big passing plays as plays over 25 yards. The way they beat the Steelers with these explosives was also extremely cool, because they have the personnel to do it.

The Steelers are rotating into Cover 2, and the Bills counter to that is running the slot defender on an out route, and the corner freezes because he’s in conflict with the outside receiver running a vertical route. The problem with, however, is that Josh Allen is on the far hash. There’s no way this throw gets in.

Unless you’re Josh Allen.

The actual first haymaker of the game was on the 98 yard TD to Gabe Davis, and that combined a bad angle by the safety doubling Davis with Davis’ speed and Josh Allen casually flicking his wrist under pressure and nailing Davis for the TD.

The 62 yard touchdown was something I can’t even call a haymaker. It was more of a Shoryuken from the depths of hell designed to be a middle finger to the entire city of Pittsburgh. Stefon Diggs is supposed to be running a deep sit against Cover 3, but he stops in the hole of the zone. Gabe Davis runs a post, but it looks like safety Minkah Fitzpatrick has it capped.

And it doesn’t matter at all, because Josh Allen throws this ball a mile and gets it up and down into Davis’ hand. That is a beautiful throw and it’s a combo breaker for the defense.

The Bills love to run a ‘Glance’ RPO. It’s an inside breaking post off of run action, that pulls linebackers up. They especially love to run it in the red zone, because Allen has the arm talent to get the ball into tight windows with speed. This was a textbook glance RPO, and pretty much a staple of the Bills offense.

Finally, the Bills face an inverted Cover Two from the Steelers, and the Bills run slot receiver Khalil Shakir on a clearout route designed to attack underneath. However, the MIKE linebacker doesn’t have eyes on the QB because he’s running with Shakir, and Allen zips this in right behind the LB’s helmet. It’s really good QB play, and an example of the problems you face when trying to have a middle player run vertical without much help up top.

The Bills play in one of the biggest games of the year on Sunday, taking on the Kansas City Chiefs. The last time these two tangled up we got one of the best games of football ever played. In order for the Bills to win, they’ll have to not only recreate these big plays, but also find positive plays in the run game.

Against the Steelers, the Bills found some success in the pin-pull run game. Mitch Morse being healthy helps a lot, and it’s a way of getting the edge for their backs. Could come in handy against a Chiefs team who looked less inclined to stop the run.

The Raiders lost again on Monday, but I was really pleased with their offensive output. They generated a 0.18 EPA/play, but what really stood out both in the numbers and on film is how effective they were running the ball. They had a 33% first down rate on all runs, and that number jumps up to 36% on early downs.

Why, you might ask?

Jakob Johnson and Josh Jacobs have become the Bushwackers for the Raiders offense.

Johnson has seen a steady snap count increase since week one, going from eight snaps to 26 and 25 in weeks four and five, respectively. That’s resulted in their EPA/rush going up from 0.01 (ninth in the league) to 0.20 EPA/rush, second only to the Cleveland Browns.

Having Johnson on the field has helped the Raiders increase their physicality in the run game, and create more lanes to get downhill in their lead zone and man blocking schemes.

Against the Chiefs, Josh Jacobs averaged 8.4 yards per attempt with Johnson on the field, and it came from plays that looked like this: lead zone with Johnson digging out the first linebacker, and Jacobs running downhill. This is old school football at its’ finest, and it sparks much joy.

Jacobs has been equally as impressive this season, looking quicker and having more burst. But where Jacobs has stood out to me is in either making people miss or bowling people over. Per SIS, Jacobs is second in the NFL in broken and missed tackles forced per attempt, only behind Josh Allen, who has almost 50 less rushing attempts than him. This is beautiful football to watch, and Jacobs has given head coach Josh McDaniels and the Raiders an identity on offense.

Watch him set up the WILL linebacker here with his vision, then cutback into the open lane, and that finish to the run made my heart grow three sizes. Running the football is beautiful to watch. The left guard and center here too, whew.

Now, this helps the Raiders offense through making it easier on the passing game. If they can continue to run the ball as effective as they’ve been doing, it’ll bring a safety into the box to be a part of the run fit. This means you’re leaving Davante Adams in single coverage, or you can be exploited in play action. That’s an area that the Raiders haven’t dipped into as much; 10 of their passing attempts in this personnel grouping have come off play action compared to 21 without.

However, if teams are going to continue to play the Raiders like this, getting their targets open off play action would help all of the receivers.

The Raiders have a bye week upcoming, then play the Texans at home, so it’ll be interesting to see if they can find a way to use this personnel and mesh the run and passing game together.

Josh McDaniels has always used a more downhill run game and play action off of that. Bringing it to Vegas could help the Raiders turn around what is heading towards a lost season.