The big issue with Geno is the drop off we saw as the season progressed. The last 5 games in particular were extremely brutal for him. His completion percentage dropped to 63% his QBR was in the lower 80s, and he had 8 TDs to 5 INTs. He also has the tendency to not come through when you need him. He's the type of player that seems to live in his head.
You can win games with Geno, but I'm afraid that with Geno you're getting a Ryan Tannehill level of QB. Not that Tannehill is a bad QB, but he's never going to be a QB that is ever going to get you over the top. There is precedent for QB's such as Geno that perform at MVP levels and also precedent for QB's such as Geno that go on crazy streaks and regress back to the mean.
I also saw that teams seemed to key in on some of Geno's tendencies as the season went on. Corners would lie in wait and jump his routes. He'd make some crazy stupid throws at times and he got away with a lot of potential INTs.
Also, is a guy like Smith worth it at over 30 mil a year? That's likely just going to be the baseline for negotiations. We have a high salary cap this year, but we also have the second least amount of players under contract. Our effective salary cap is going to be VERY tight.
He just screams to me the sort of player that Russell Wilson was. Good enough that you have to pay him a hell of a lot of money, not good enough to overcome the resource drain that contract entails. In addition to that, the defense is a MASSIVE liability that is thread bare at the moment. Three years in a row we were on pace to shatter some god awful historically bad marker such as most yards given up, most TD's given up, most run yards, etc, etc. Usually they rectify it come late season, but then they revert at inopportune times.
I think Geno is the sort of guy that gets you competing for the wildcard spots, but can't seal the deal, just like the guy we had before.
It might be advantageous to transition tag Geno, try to trade him and pour money and resources into rectifying this defense. We could go with Drew Lock and some rookie, or have Drew Lock be our Tarvaris Jackson for a year. Geno Smith just seems like a massive band-aid over a leaky sieve.