Bart Scott isn’t just looking at Geno Smith’s sack total and moving on. He sees a quarterback who may be forced into a different kind of game Sunday against the Patriots if the Jets are again missing left guard Dylan Parham.
Smith’s run of five straight games without an interception stands out, but so does the punishment he’s taken. Over his last four games, he has absorbed 16 sacks, and the 134 yards he’s lost on those plays currently lead the NFL. With Parham sidelined for a fourth straight game because of a knee injury, Scott thinks the middle of the Jets’ protection could be the problem area.
“The interior’s gonna be pushed, and Geno’s gonna be having the pocket pushed in his face,” Scott told ESPN New York. “It’s gonna flush him out, and he’s gonna have to make plays with his legs, which he’s been a little hesitant to do.”
That would put the spotlight on a part of Smith’s game that has been there, but not heavily used this season. He has 43 rushing yards on 18 carries, and most of that came on a 17-yard run in Week 3.
Scott also tossed out a comparison that lands in a very specific football time capsule, saying Smith isn’t Charlie Batch, the former Lions and Steelers quarterback best known as Ben Roethlisberger’s longtime backup.
The reference is a deep cut, but it does fit Scott’s point. Batch, who last played in 2012, ran for 515 yards and 4.6 yards per carry across his first 37 starts. In his final eight seasons, though, he never topped 45 rushing yards in a year.
Smith’s own reputation as a runner goes back to his West Virginia days, when he was seen as an electric dual-threat quarterback. There was a time when he might have been projected beyond the second round, or even as a receiver candidate. He came into the league during the rise of the modern mobile quarterback, when Cam Newton and Colin Kaepernick were changing what teams expected from the position.
Rex Ryan and Marty Mornhinweg tried to balance that part of Smith’s game, and as a rookie he produced 366 rushing yards and six touchdowns. His efficiency fell off in 2014, and his path back to being a full-time starter didn’t arrive until 2022.
That history matters because Smith was never Justin Fields - not a quarterback whose rushing volume could realistically carry him to 700 yards. He’s a runner in spots, and age has taken away some of the burst he once had.
Still, the Jets have to weigh how much they want to ask him to do on the ground. If that kind of scrambling creates real injury danger, Aaron Glenn and Frank Reich may want to keep things just as they are. Braelon Allen has handled his role extremely well with Breece Hall out, and Isaiah Davis also returned from Witness Protection last week.
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