Raiders Insider Admits His 1st Reaction to the Geno Smith Trade

Geno Smith might not have been the first quarterback the Raiders pursued in the offseason, but according to head coach Pete Carroll, Smith is 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].”

There were other quarterbacks the Raiders pursued before Smith, but there is reason to believe the team wasn’t willing to give up any more for Matthew Stafford than they did for Smith.

After Stafford announced that he was returning to the Rams, the Raiders pivoted quickly to Smith and the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Vinny Bonsignore acknowledged this week 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?'”

In the months since the trade, Bonsignore has answered his own question and believes Smith is going to be a significant upgrade over Aidan O’Connell and Gardner Minshew.

But Bonsignore’s admission is reflective of what a lot of fans and media types around the league have said about Smith in recent years.

Smith has been a journeyman quarterback since he was drafted by the Jets in 2013 and despite a few good years in Seattle, he still has doubters.

League analyst Warren Sharp released his ‘Quarterback Tiers’ for 2025 and Smith came in just above the lowest tier, alongside Sam Darnold and Aaron Rodgers.

A lot of fans outside of the Pacific Northwest aren’t familiar with the successful years of Smith’s NFL career – and even fewer are aware of his bond with Carroll.

The Athletic’s Michael-Shawn Dugar covered the head coach and quarterback in Seattle, and in April he shared a few interesting insights on Carroll’s affinity for Geno.

“Pete knows Geno and probably believes in Geno more than anyone outside of Geno’s immediate family. The way Pete talks about Geno is the way I talk about my daughter. Pete really loves this dude,” Dugar said on the Just Win podcast.

“At some point last year, he was like, ‘Geno is one of my favorite stories. He’s one of my favorite players I’ve ever coached.’ Pete has been coaching since the 70s. For Geno to rank that high, that means a lot.”