Smith provides WVU fans with a feel-good story
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MORGANTOWN -- If ever a university was in need of a feel-good sports story to help it through troubled times, it is West Virginia University, which has seen not only its football program but its basketball program fall upon lean times.
The thing is, there has been one out there all year that we let slip by somewhat under our radar. While we were suffering the self-pity and discontent that fandom often experienced when the good times turn bad on the athletic fields, out west there was unfolding an NFL story that not only was heartwarming but which carried a strong lesson for Mountaineer fans with it.
A decade ago, Geno Smith, the most prolific passing quarterback in WVU history, threw his final pass for the Mountaineers, ending the most successful and exciting decade of football in the school's long history. It was the decade from 2002 through 2012, a time when Pat White, Steve Slaton, Noel Devine, Owen Schmitt, Tavon Austin, Stedman Bailey and Smith played offensive football as it never had been played at the school.
From 2002 to 2011 the Mountaineers went 95-33, a decade without a losing season, a decade in which they recorded three 11-win seasons and a 10-win year. After having lost 11 of 12 bowl games from 1984 to 2005, they won four straight and five of seven, capping it off with Geno Smith leading the Mountaineers to a 70-33 Orange Bowl victory over Clemson.
The future -- the world itself -- belonged to Smith, but his dreams of being a first-round draft pick came to a painful end when he was passed over on the first night, winding up a second-round pick of the New York Jets and struggling through his career.
He was an NFL quarterback, sometimes a starting quarterback, all those years but never reached the fame and fortune that had seemed to be his to grab … and then this year, with the world completely counting him out, he received one final chance and delivered.
On Sunday afternoon he and the Seattle Seahawks came from behind in a game that mirrored his entire NFL career to not only pull out a victory over the L.A. Rams but to survive through a tense night as the Detroit Lions beat the Packers in Green Bay to open a playoff spot for the Seahawks.
This was a team that had let its beloved, veteran quarterback, Russell Wilson leave, then placed the faith in Geno Smith that no one else had to run the team and he not only would revive the team, but his own career.
At age 32 and given up upon by everyone but himself and Seattle coach Pete Carroll, Geno Smith has undergone a resurrection and broken Wilson's single-season records for passing yards, completions and completion percentage while using his talent but leaning far more heavily upon his character to will the Seahawks into the playoffs.
When things were at their worst, that coming as he threw a quick interception to put his team behind, then another, Smith held them all together as he leaned upon the one phrase that Carroll had etched into his mind, that being "the epitome of poise."
His poise became poison to the Rams as he completed a clutch 17-yard pass to Tyler Lockett to set up the winning field goal in overtime.
Let's, for a moment, return to an earlier game when Carroll was caught by the camera following Smith out to the field at a crucial moment when things had gone wrong, shouting at him. The words were caught for the world to hear but more so by Smith, who listened to them.
"My phrase is the epitome of poise, to remember where you need to be," Carroll remarked in an interview leading into Sunday's game with the Rams. "He's hot-tempered, man. He's fiery. He's got to be like that, but he needs to return."
And so it was when he threw that early interception on Sunday. Just as his career had been derailed early, so, too, was his game-plan Sunday, but he understood what had happened. He understood that it was a play, a bad result but not the end of the human race or, for that matter, the race to the playoffs.
"Man, that's a tough way to start a game. We've done it twice now. It's unacceptable in my eyes, but when it happens, you have to have a short memory," he said in the post-game interview. "Playing quarterback is like playing cornerback. Cornerbacks get beat. When you are a quarterback, you are going to throw interceptions at some point. You have to remember to move past it.
"You have to look and see what happened, why it happened and fix it and move on because there's a lot of time left to play."
They managed to get to overtime. That is the time for the leaders to take over and Geno Smith always has been a leader, from his days in high school in the Miami, Florida, area, from Morgantown, no matter where he played whether he was on the field or off.
"He reminded us when we were in the huddle, 'Hey, just calm down. It's just football,'" Lockett recalled after the game. "Man, Geno just showed us who he's always been. He's a gamer. Even when it's all on the line, he's going to go out there and still be poised, still going to play.
"It's hard, especially when you go out there and things don't go your way early on. He had picks and stuff like that, but to show the fight and how you respond, that's what you want in a player, that's what you want in a teammate, somebody that's just going to keep on fighting."
Receiver and quarterback. That's the way it's supposed to be. It's the way it was with Smith and Bailey and Austin.
Geno Smith understands those relationships.
"We knew our season was at stake," Smith said of the feeling as the game, and his career, went into overtime. "We don't want our season to end. Our coaches, everybody in the locker room, we feel like we are coming together at just the right time. We're enjoying one another. Going to work and the locker room is so much fun that we don't want the season to end right now.
"We had to come together and get a win. The defense kept us in the game. We were struggling on offense, but we found a way. It took everybody and I was glad to see that happen."
And that it happened with Smith and Lockett teaming up … well, that was almost as if it were preordained.
"Tyler and I have done that so many times … you know, training camp, OTAs, practices. He's one of the better receivers I've ever played with and when it's one-on-one on those deep passes, he's always going to get his toes in. That we know. He's a dynamic player with a lot of heart. He's one of those players I'll never forget."
Now, Smith gets not only to do it again. He has proven himself as an NFL quarterback and put himself, at 32, for probably a 3-year contract, maybe worth $30 million or more.