Geno Smith speaks candidly after struggles against Chargers

After a promising enough start to the season against the New England Patriots, Monday’s game against the Los Angeles Chargers felt like three steps back for Las Vegas Raiders quarterback Geno Smith.

Smith was unable to guide the Raiders to the end zone in the Raiders’ 20-9 loss to the Chargers. He completed 24 of his 43 passing attempts, throwing for only 180 yards and three interceptions. Smith’s decision-making with the football was a target of criticism all game long, and the Chargers defense limited the offense from generating many explosive plays.

With a short week of practice coming up to prepare for the Raiders’ next game against the Washington Commanders, Smith will have to bounce back quickly.

Smith promised to learn from his mistakes after the Chargers game.

While Smith will be eager to put this game in the rearview mirror, he told reporters during his postgame media availability that he is going to correct what went wrong.

“I’ve got to learn from it,” Smith said. “You know what I mean? This game is all about learning from your experiences. This is a game—again, I’ve had similar games in the past where the ball has bounced in an unfortunate way, or decisions haven’t [been] the best on a given play, or the best throw. That’s a part of the game.

“But you can never just say you can flush it. You’ve got to learn from it. I’m going to be super hard on myself—extremely hard on myself—because that’s all I know. I’m going to get better this week; I’m going to find ways to get better from, and we’ll be better as a team as well.“

The Raiders can help Smith out in this regard by asking him not to do too much.

Clearly, asking Smith to throw over 40 passes is not a viable strategy moving forward. While the rushing attack did not impress for the second week in a row, head coach Pete Carroll and offensive coordinator Chip Kelly have often relied on it to get their offenses going. They must now fix that problem to get some balance into the gameplan, lest Smith has to be one-dimensional and give opposing defenses a clear idea on how to stop them.

The Chargers highlighted the problems that the Raiders currently have, and they now have only a short week of practice to get things going back in the right direction.