Geno Smith Traded to the Raiders: Fantasy Football Advice (2025)

The Las Vegas Raiders have acquired quarterback Geno Smith in a trade with the Seattle Seahawks for a 2025 third-round pick, shaking up their offense ahead of the 2025 season. Smith, who revived his career in Seattle, now reunites with head coach Pete Carroll and a Raiders squad searching for stability under center after an underwhelming 2024 campaign.

Geno Smith Trade Fantasy Football Impact

Raiders Outlook

The expectation is the Raiders will look to sign Smith to a contract extension, as he is in the final year of his deal.

With a solid supporting cast that includes Brock Bowers and Jakobi Meyers, Smith’s fantasy outlook will hinge on how well he adapts to a new system led by offensive coordinator Chip Kelly. While he’s unlikely to crack the top-15 QB1 tier in standard formats, he presents streaming potential in favorable matchups and remains a viable option in Superflex leagues.

Smith has been a fantasy QB2 over the last two seasons as the Seahawks starting QB (despite terrible pass-blocking), after he finished as a top-5 fantasy QB in 2022. Mid-to-late-range fantasy QB2 seems like an accurate projection for the new Raiders QB.

The Las Vegas OL is also underrated and an upgrade from Seattle’s 2024 blocking unit.

If anything, the Smith trade is a major boost for incumbents such as Bowers and Meyers. Smith’s calling card is accuracy, with the 5th-highest completion percentage in the NFL last season (70.4%). Per Fantasy Points, Smith was also top-12 in accurate ball placement and 5th in catchable throw rate (78.2%).

Last season, the Raiders’ cumulative catchable throw rate ranked 6th-worst (72%).

In my top-12 fantasy tight ends video, I mentioned being bearish on Bowers at his ADP, given the question marks about the Raiders QB in 2025. But I’ll be the first to admit that with Smith as his QB, Bowers’ chances of returning on his Round 2 draft capital have increased substantially.

Just be prepared for Tyler Lockett to be added to the target competition discourse in Sin City.

Seahawks Outlook

Moving away from both Smith and Metcalf suggests the Seahawks are in a full-blown rebuild, but I don’t necessarily see it that way.

Both guys were in the last year of their deals. The current Seattle regime had them both last season, and they just narrowly missed the playoffs at 10-7 despite an extremely strong finish (winning six of the last eight games). But the offense was inconsistent. They fired Ryan Grubb after one season because the offensive direction wasn’t aligned with what Mike Macdonald envisioned.

Smith/Metcalf didn’t reflect the identity of the team moving forward.

All the transactions they have made to the personnel this offseason indicates they want to get back to the basics running the football and playing defense in 2025.

GM John Schneider said via Seahawks.com, “We’ve got to get Lumen rocking again. We’ve got to get speed on defense and be able to run the ball and get our identity. The new coaching staff, the new offensive staff, it’s pretty cool. It’s a proven system, and the teachers are really impressive.”

He also spoke glowingly about the shift to a wide zone scheme under new offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak.

The offensive line still remains a major work in progress, as I outlined in my 2025 Team Needs article. Now you need to move QB and WR up the Seahawks’ to-do list.

For more on the Seahawks’ “2025 rebuild,” I recommend reading this article on the Athletic.

Jaxon Smith-Njigba Value

Once we have a veteran QB brought in for the Seahawks, we can further assess the top playmakers in Seattle such as Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Kenneth Walker and Zach Charbonnet.

For somebody like JSN, it might not matter who the QB is as long as he is dominating the target share. He had six games with double-digit targets last season and averaged 18.4 points per game (half-PPR). Good for WR2 last season in half-PPR scoring.

Give him volume, and we should be fine.