Patriots safety Jaylinn Hawkins intercepting a pass from Geno Smith after an announcer jinx from Adam Archuleta. Photo Credit: CBS
By Reice Shipley on

Geno Smith’s debut as a member of the Las Vegas Raiders was largely positive as his team came away with a win over the New England Patriots while also putting up the most passing yards of any quarterback in the early window of games on Sunday. But Smith did make one big mistake, which the superstitious among us can blame on CBS color analyst Adam Archuleta.

In the first quarter of Sunday’s game, Archuleta attempted to highlight Smith’s top strengths as a quarterback, acknowledging that the interceptions have been an issue, but that Smith is a “tremendously accurate quarterback” who “knows where to go with the ball.”

“Listen, Geno Smith is who he is,” said Archuleta moments after the Raiders got into Patriots territory. “He has put up numbers. He’s been a tremendously accurate quarterback. He’s an aggressive quarterback. The only real blip is last year, you see the 15 interceptions. And they struggled a little bit in the red zone. But this is who Geno Smith is. Very smart, knows where to go with the ball, and has all the talent to make the throws.”

Archuleta’s comments may be true the majority of the time. But ironically, as Archuleta was making his analysis about Smith, the veteran quarterback threw an ill-advised pass into triple coverage that got tipped up into the air and intercepted by Patriots safety Jaylinn Hawkins.

To be fair to Archuleta, he did reference Smith’s problems with turnovers, which reared their ugly head in this instance. But fortunately, this lowlight for Smith was largely just a blip on the radar of an excellent game from him.

Ultimately, Smith would throw for 362 yards, out-dueling Patriots second-year quarterback Drake Maye en route to a 20-13 victory to get his Raiders tenure started off on the right foot.

About Reice Shipley

Reice Shipley is a staff writer for Comeback Media that graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in Sports Media. He previously worked at Barrett Sports Media and is a fan of all things Syracuse sports.

View all posts by Reice Shipley