Tom Rock: Geno Smith, the Jets and the 'promised land'? Maybe that's not so far-fetched right now
Geno Smith of the New York Jets reacts after the game against the Tennessee Titans at Nissan Stadium on September 13, 2026. Credit: Getty Images/Justin Ford
FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — Aaron Glenn gave the league a good guffaw in the spring when he casually mentioned that he believed Geno Smith could be “the guy that’s going to lead us to the promised land.”
We all laughed and laughed. And why not? This was a coach who just a year earlier put his unwavering faith in Justin Fields, only to see that commitment burst into job-threatening flames. And Smith, who had done a nice job rehabilitating his career during a stint in Seattle, was coming off an awful season with the Raiders in which he played so poorly that his big accomplishment for Las Vegas was securing it the top pick in the draft.
Now here we are, six months later, and that cackling and tittering has quieted quite a bit.
It’s still absurd to think that Smith will lead the Jets to a championship or that he is the long-term answer to the franchise’s 50-year-long quarterback audition. If that’s the “promised land” that Glenn was referencing, then go ahead, snicker away. It’s worth noting that neither Glenn nor Smith nor anyone in the organization has returned to that phrasing, by the way.
But football’s “promised land” is a big place with lots of neighborhoods. Several of them suddenly seem zoned for Smith and the Jets. There is Stability Street. Functionality Drive. Competence Court. Respectability Road. These are all elements that have eluded the Jets for a long time.
Oh, and Winning Way, too. Smith very much helped the Jets beat the Titans in the opener in Tennessee last week.
He’s given the Jets and their fans a respite from the traditional mourning that occurs as soon as the season starts, allowed them to puff their chests for at least a little while and created some optimism and buzz around the team.
Could there be more? Is this the start of the Geno-ssance? Is Geno suddenly Gee-yes? At this point, the Jets and their fans probably would settle for Gee-maybe.
It’s been only one game, and it came against a Titans team that looked woefully unprepared mentally and physically to compete at the NFL level in almost every regard with a young quarterback who appeared to be completely overmatched.
Maybe that’s the point, though. That’s what we used to say about the Jets. A lot.
Smith still has a long way to go toward erasing that narrative completely. Perhaps he never will. There have been times when it has felt as if no one ever will. But he’s at least nudging it to the side for the time being, and that can be seen as a small slice of “promised land.”
He’s performed at a better-than-expected clip. He completed 19 of his 24 passes for 215 yards against the Titans, which is efficient but not spectacular, considering he did not throw for a touchdown. But he didn’t throw any interceptions, either. According to Pro Football Focus, his passing grade of 88.4 against the Titans was the highest among all quarterbacks in Week 1 and his 84.6 overall grade ranked fourth.
Glenn praised his “quarterback efficiency” as a key to the win.
“As long as he continues to be on that and continues to understand that, I think he’s going to do a good job for us,” Glenn said. “I expect that from him. He’s a damn good player. That’s the reason why he’s here.”
Smith had help. He had Garrett Wilson and Breece Hall and Kenyon Sadiq out there with him. And he had a solid defensive effort that befuddled those Titans. The Jets have had those elements in the past, too, though. What they always were missing was the quarterback to bring them together.
Smith downplayed the idea that his performance proved anything to anyone, especially not his many doubters and those who laughed at the “promised land” line among other stumbles throughout his career, both with the Jets and elsewhere.
“I can’t hear any critics, I’m sorry,” he said on Wednesday. “I just focus on what I have to do every day and the whole critics [thing], I respect you guys and I appreciate that you guys have jobs to do, but I also have a job to do. So I don’t really pay attention to any of that.”
None of that is true. Smith is well-known to hold grudges like footballs going through the hole: High and tight so no one can pry them loose.
This is the quarterback who in 2022 famously said in an on-field postgame interview with the Seahawks: “They wrote me off; I ain’t write back though.”
He’s the quarterback who, after his one and only start for the Giants in Oakland in 2017 that upended the entire franchise, used his postgame news conference to wade into a spat with his former Jets coach, Rex Ryan, who had ripped him on ESPN that morning. He called Ryan a “coward” and insisted that the Jets players had saved his job in 2013.
And when he beat those Giants in Seattle in 2022, he insisted he felt no sense of revenge . . . then dedicated the win to Jerry Reese and Ben McAdoo, the former general manager and head coach who were fired the day after that lone start for the team.
All were good zingers. Great, memorable lines. He got his point across clearly and succinctly in each of those instances. His accuracy with them was better than it was with his passes on the field.
At age 35, he’s obviously chosen to avoid verbal clapbacks in favor of his play, allowing that to speak for itself. He’s shrugged off just about any question he’s been asked for the last few months that had to do with how he feels or what he thinks.
That’s fine. He can have the high road. It’s a good path to take.
It could lead somewhere completely unexpected, too. One might even call that destination “promised.”
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
