Smith believed to have torn ACL

Jets QB Geno Smith is believed to have suffered a torn ACL in Sunday's game against the Ravens, per NFL Network's Ian Rapoport. He'll undergo additional testing to confirm the injury that would end his season. Incredibly jinxed, Smith is due to hit the free-agent market this offseason. The Jets, meanwhile, will go back to Ryan Fitzpatrick under center. He gets a plus Week 8 matchup against Cleveland's 30th-ranked QB defense, putting him on the spot-start radar for bold fantasy owners.

Seahawks HC Pete Caroll was back with the team after a bout with COVID, and he had a Friday update on the QB competition: "Geno [Smith] continues to be on top. He's ahead. He's been in the lead for all of the obvious reasons and he's holding on to it and doing a really good job of battling." Carroll did add that there's still a good bit of time left in the evaluation process. "We need reps, we need turns to see more situations to really find any reason to see a difference between the guys," he said, according to The Seattle Times. So we won't consider it decided yet, but it does seem we need to consider Smith the front-runner at this point. His primary advantage is having been with the Seahawks since 2019. For fantasy football purposes, the winner of this battle only matters in superflex, 2-QB and DFS formats.

Seahawks QB Geno Smith opened training camp with the 1st-team offense, right where he was in the spring. “Geno is in the lead. He’s ahead and he ain’t looking back,” HC Pete Carroll said. “He’s going for it. Drew [Lock] is not going to take a back seat. Something is going to happen.” What's "going to happen" probably won't be pretty. We're still expecting both of these guys to make starts this season. It's a situation to avoid in fantasy drafts.

Let's start with HC Pete Carroll's full quote on the Geno Smith-Drew Lock competition after Thursday's practice (per Liz Matthews of Seahawks Wire: “Geno’s still ahead, you can tell that, but it’s not going to be too much for Drew to be caught up. By the time we get through camp he’ll be there. He’s really bright. It makes sense to him. He’s really sharp in the huddle and at the line of scrimmage and all of that. So it’s just time that he needs, and there’s nothing we can do but gain some more of that.” You could easily read that and come away with the headline that Smith is the leader in the race for the starting gig. It sure seems like Carroll is expecting (hoping?) Lock to catch up and potentially overtake him, though. Carroll added that "it's gonna be a real battle." It's not surprising that the incumbent stands ahead at this early stage. We'd still bet Lock between them as the Week 1 starter, though. And we also still wouldn't rule out the possibility of the team adding someone else, such as Baker Mayfield.

Seahawks OC Shane Waldron and HC Pete Carroll have both recently said that QB Geno Smith opens offseason workouts as the leader at QB. “Right now, Geno has done such a good job of carrying over (the offensive principles from 2021). He already had a head start over Drew right there,” Waldron told KJR radio this week. That seemed to echo Carroll's sentiment that Smith "automatically" starts ahead of Drew Lock. Waldron added, "We have a long way to go to see where this competition (goes).” For now, the fantasy football takeaway is that there's a competition to replace Russell Wilson in Seattle. It's not necessarily Lock's job.

The Athletic's Michael-Shawn Dugar projects Geno Smith as Seattle's starting QB in his post-draft depth chart, with Drew Lock as the #2. "But this will be an open competition that may not see a winner until the third and final preseason game," Dugar concedes. The Seahawks will have arguably the worst QB play in the NFL regardless of who's under center this season, barring a trade for someone like Baker Mayfield or Jimmy Garoppolo. Neither Smith nor Lock is worth a pick in early best-ball drafts.