Grading Seahawks QB Geno Smith for a challenging game vs. Broncos defense Week 1

The Seattle Seahawks may have come out on the field today expecting to dominate the Denver Broncos. While they eventually took care of business, they got punched in the mouth to open the game and the Broncos dominated the Seattle offense at the line of scrimmage for the vast majority of the first half.

Their defense held up their end of the bargain and kept the game close, though. Finally, after nearly 25 minutes of awful offensive production, the Seahawks broke through in the second quarter when starting quarterback Geno Smith was forced to scramble out of the backfield, a desperate run which he turned into a 34-yard touchdown . That seemed to light a spark and helped fuel what was a completely dominant second half in Seattle's win.

Following his touchdown run, offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb made some clever adjustments at halftime, mostly geared towards running the ball to take the pressure off Smith. It worked, but Smith just couldn't muster much as far as stats go. He finished the afternoon 18/25 for 171 yards, one touchdown, one interception and an 87.2 passer rating.

Geno Smith Week 1 grade: B-

This was a pretty difficult game to grade, considering the bad pass blocking that Smith had to deal with. We did our best to adjust the grading curve for that, but the early interception and the middling numbers are going to result in a just-above average grade of a B-.

It might be fair to call it a harsh grade, but we've seen Smith perform far better against heavy pressure than he did in this game against Denver. Over the last couple of years we have developed high expectations for Smith's level of play and won't apologize for it.