Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll has addressed his current quarterback competition between Geno Smith and Drew Lock. 

For the first time since the 2012 season, the Seattle Seahawks are in the position of not knowing exactly who their quarterback is going to be for the upcoming campaign. 

That role had been occupied by Russell Wilson ever since he won the quarterback battle with Matt Flynn in the summer of 2011, but following his trade to the Denver Broncos this offseason, the Seahawks have essentially got to start from scratch when it comes to the position.

The Seahawks did acquire a quarterback in the trade for Wilson in the form of Drew Lock, a second-round pick by the Broncos in the 2019 NFL Draft, and he was brought in to compete with former New York Jets, New York Giants and Los Angeles Chargers quarterback Geno Smith, who had served as Wilson’s backup for the past two seasons as well as former Indianapolis Colts quarterback Jacob Eason.

However, the battle in preseason hasn’t exactly produced a clear winner to this stage.

No leaders in the clubhouse

After their first two preseason games, both of which were losses, the state of the quarterbacks is thus: Smith has completed 60.6% of his passes, 213 yards and no touchdowns, Eason has completed 48.6% of his throws for 141 yards and no touchdowns, whilst Lock has a 73.3% completion rate, 102 passing yards and 2 touchdowns. 

It seems as if Smith and Lock are the two in the lead, but who is going to emerge victorious out of both of them still looks to be up in the air at this stage, with both having their strengths and weaknesses, but with just one preseason game to go, there isn’t a lot of time for a clear frontrunner to emerge.

But according to Pete Carroll, he intends to use every last bit of play that he has to find his man under centre. 

What’s he said?

Speaking to reporters during practice (via ESPN), Carroll said that he and the team will take “all the time we need” to find a quarterback, stating that: 

"I'm wide open for whatever happens. Geno's been the guy in the lead position the whole time, and I've protected that thought throughout. He's done a really nice job. He's been very consistent. So we'll just see what happens. There's two more weeks of practice, too, after this. I had a set thought on what we would do with the timeline but that got disrupted, so we're going to use all the time we need."

So it would seem as though Smith has the lead, but with Carroll also saying that Lock would play “a lot” in the team’s final preseason game and that he’s "wide open" on the idea of Lock also becoming the starter, it does throw the position into some doubt.

Although, seeing as the Seahawks are in something of a rebuilding mode, demonstrated by trading away Wilson and allowing Bobby Wagner to leave in free agency, it might not necessarily be the case that the best quarterback should be the starter, and it might be beneficial for them to put in whoever is worse of the two in order to obtain some better draft picks.