Geno Smith doing what Russell Wilson didn’t: Wear Seahawks plays on his wrist. It works

Here’s another reason Geno Smith has been so good, so efficient, so smooth leading the first-place Seahawks: fashion.

Yes, what he wears during games matters. Just ask his coach.

The day after Smith’s near-flawless finish sparked Seattle’s come-from-behind win at Arizona on Sunday, the 6-3 team’s fourth consecutive victory, coach Pete Carroll said the play-card wristband the quarterback wears in games has made the NFL’s fourth-highest scoring offense smoother and better.

Smith wears a card on his left forearm that has Waldron’s play calls on it. It’s categorized by a code. Waldron gives the quarterback a one-word code, a number or whatever, through the league’s quarterback-play caller wireless communications system.

“If you notice, Geno’s going off the wristband, and that’s a big help,” Carroll told KIRO-AM radio Monday. “It’s smoothed things out, sped things up, cleaned things up.”

A Seahawks quarterback wearing a plays wristband is new. Russell Wilson did not wear one, not in any of his 10 seasons leading Seattle’s offense.

“We never did that before,” Carroll said on KIRO Monday.

Why not?

“There was resistance to that,” Carroll said, interestingly, “so we didn’t do that before.”

Waldron was asked following practice Tuesday why he didn’t use a wristband play card with Wilson last season.

“Just, different people are used to different things,” Waldron said.

Wilson isn’t wearing a play card on his arm in Denver this season, either.

As you might have noticed from the Pacific Northwest,Wilson and his Broncos are 3-5, in third place in the four-team AFC West and ranked 30th out of 32 teams in scoring points (15.1 per game). He’s on pace for his worst NFL season, statistically and otherwise.

The Seahawks traded him to the Broncos in March. They got back quarterback Drew Lock from Denver as part of the mammoth return package.

The next month the Seahawks began offseason practices — with Smith and Lock using play-card wrist bands.

“When we were talking in the offseason, it was one of the things that we brought up, for the quarterbacks to talk through,” Waldron said. “I think just different experiences — just in years prior in L.A. that wasn’t necessarily a wrist-banded system — I think a lot of times you are products of your latest experiences. For me, just trying to keep rolling within the system, as well, calling the plays and making sure we have a clean operation.

“Just thought it was a good thing to bring on board.”

Working well for Geno Smith

Carroll said the wristband is part of Smith “getting everything he can get out of Shane. That’s a really important part of it.”

And Waldron is getting everything great of out Smith.

Smith has the NFL’s highest completion percentage (73.1). It’s the fifth-highest rate by a regularly starting quarterback through the first nine games of a season in league history. Only Drew Brees (three times) and Tom Brady have started a season more on-target.

Smith plays Brady and his Tampa Bay Buccaneers (4-5) Sunday in the first NFL game in Germany. Smith, Brady and Derek Carr are the only quarterbacks since 1950 with a completion rate of at least 70% in each of their team’s first four games.

Smith, the 10-year veteran and seven-year backup for four teams before this season, has set his career high with 15 touchdown passes, fourth-most in the league, against just four interceptions. Smith is the NFL’s third-highest-rated passer (107.2 passer rating). He is sixth in the league in yards and sixth in completions.

When Smith and the Seahawks get to Germany on Thursday, they will see Smith’s likeness painted atop Munich’s Olympiaturm landmark.

Smith wore a play card on his left forearm last season, too, while he was making three starts filling in during Wilson’s first missed games due to injury of his career.

During those games last October into November, Wilson finally wore a play card on his wrist — while on the sidelines is a sweatsuit with a speaker in his ear following Waldron’s calls to Smith before plays.

Otherwise, Wilson in games usually wore nothing but a dark sweat band over his left wrist.

A more efficient, effective Seahawks offense

The play-card wristband is about efficiency.

An efficient communications system between plays leads to smoother operations, smoother play calls — and a smoother offense.

The Seahawks have three delay-of-game penalties through nine games of the 17-game regular season. They had eight fouls for delay of game last season.

But it’s more than avoiding 5-yard penalties.

The play card on the wrist allows Smith to be more efficient relaying the plays to his teammates and getting them out of the huddle. He’s often done it with more than 15 seconds remaining on the 40-second play clock. That’s time in which Waldron can remind through the quarterback’s headset of reads, what to look for from a defense in that situation, tip him off to alignments they are seeing coming up to the ball, whatever.

By league rule the communication systems goes silent with 15 seconds remaining on the play clock before each snap.

“Shane helps him all the way through to the 15-second point,” Carroll said.

“They’re just communicating to get it done and there’s this conversation that goes on, so they work it out, and Geno was taking advantage of all of that (at Arizona last weekend).”

Waldron says it’s not that Smith couldn’t or wouldn’t call the plays without the wristband. It would just take longer, and thus take time and efficiency away from the process between plays and leading up to the snap.

“Having the wrist band is just something that we can always utilize, especially some of the calls that might get a little wordy,” Waldron said.

“It’s not for Geno’s ability to call the plays. It’s really for the quick transition from me giving him the play, so I don’t have to regurgitate the entire thing and then he has to do it again.

“It’s been something that’s been helpful through the course of this year, just through the communication standpoint.”