Is this a renovation or rebuild?

Geno Smith is headed to the Raiders, D.K. Metcalf will be in Pittsburgh and it sure seems like any unsigned quarterback other than Russell Wilson has a chance to end up under center in Seattle.

It is the most sudden makeover I’ve seen in the 20 years since I first was assigned to cover the team, and there was a time I would have felt verrrrry guilty for not having seen any of this coming.

It’s possible I should still feel verrrrrrrrrrry guilty for not having seen this coming especially since I was arguing a little over a month ago that keeping Smith and Metcalf was very much the right thing to do.

The fact that I’m hopelessly dim hasn’t kept me from being excited by these changes and the uncertainty that comes with them. So much so that I’m adopting a new rule for my coverage going forward. That’s at the bottom of the newsletter, but first I want to take your temperature and the review recent events:

Level of surprise: shocking. I’m still trying to wipe the egg off my face as I explained in the column I wrote after for The News Tribune this past weekend.

In the past month, coach Mike Macdonald and GM John Schneider expressed fairly unequivocal confidence in Smith going forward. Schneider even stated the team would look to negotiate a contract extension with Smith.

So what happened?

Well, it does not seem like those contract discussions went well, does it? Multiple reports have stated that Smith’s representatives turned down Seattle’s offer and didn’t offer a counter proposal. Initially, the impasse was presumed to be over money. Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated reported Seattle was offering something along the lines of $35 million annually, and Smith was seeking more in the neighborhood of $45 million. However, Bob Condotta of The Seattle Times reported Seattle’s two-year offer averaged between $40 and $45 million, similar to the new deal Matthew Stafford signed with the Rams. This has caused some to conclude that Smith simply wanted to be reunited with Pete Carroll, who’s now coaching the Raiders.

So what really happened?

Why would you think I know? I’ve already established that I’m not only a step behind on these stories, but I don’t feel all that bad about being a step behind.

But if you still want my opinion, I think Smith felt Seattle’s offer did not reflect a long-term commitment to him as a starter. This is speculation on my part, and it’s based more on how things ended with Matt Hasselbeck back in 2011 as opposed to any insight into the specific length and guarantees of Seattle’s offer.

I think Smith wondered if Seattle really and truly hoped he’d still be the starter come 2026 or whether they’d spend the next 12 months identifying and preparing the next guy.

It’s also possible that Smith’s patience was already worn out. He’d wanted to talk about a new contract a year ago, and Seattle declared it a non-starter. There was no rush to get an extension done after the season ended, either, which made him ready for a reunion with the coach who resuscitated his career.

How big of a blow is this to Seattle?

That depends on what comes next. If Seattle winds up with Kirk Cousins? Not a big deal. If it’s Sam Darnold, I think that would be a bigger issue. Smith has been one of the best in the league at operating while under pressure, but that has been a significant issue for Darnold.

If Seattle winds up with Aaron Rodgers? It’s anyone’s guess. It could be a wild ride with a potentially high ceiling but a very low floor.

The bottom line: Seattle was slightly over .500 in Smith’s starts over the past three seasons. That’s not a criticism. It was better than many expected when he first won the job, and while he’s not the reason Seattle had remained in pretty much the same spot in the standings the past three seasons, he hadn’t been able to get the Seahawks over the hump, either.

Level of surprise: We had a few days warning.

There was a window of time – perhaps 24 hours – where it seemed like D.K. Metcalf’s odds of returning actually increased. That’s because Lindsey Thiry of ESPN reported the trade of Smith paired with the potential signing of Sam Darnold might make Metcalf less desirous of a trade. My former co-worker Gee Scott also connected those particular dots.

So what happened?

On Sunday, there was a report that Seattle was willing to accept a second-round pick as compensation for trading Metcalf, which was a pretty clear sign a deal was in the offing. By the end of the day, the news broke that he was headed to Pittsburgh where he would sign a five-year, $150 million contract.

How big of a blow is this?

In the short term? Huge. Seattle goes from having what was considered one of the league’s better receiving trios entering last season to having exactly one established starter in that room currently.

However …

I would also point out that Seattle has not had a great track record when it comes to signing players it has drafted to their third multi-year contract. Kam Chancellor, Michael Bennett and Marshawn Lynch all signed multi-year extensions and never even got to the first game of the years that were added on their respective deals.

So is there any good news for Seattle?

Heck yeah. The Seahawks re-signed middle linebacker Ernest Jones to a three-year extension as well as defensive tackle Jarran Reed. Given Jones’s impact, that’s a huge step toward maintaining the progress that Seattle’s defense showed over the course of the season.

It occurred to me late last week that I didn’t have a strong opinion about exactly how the Seahawks would work through Metcalf’s trade request.

I mean, I thought it was more likely than not that he’d be traded. I even put a number on it: 66.2 percent, but I said explicitly that this was a number I had extracted from my own hindparts, and that still left a significant chance Metcalf would be back in Seattle.

I was struck by how much I enjoyed this uncertainty of not really knowing how things would work out.

That might sound silly as one of the main selling points of sports is the uncertainty of the outcome. But over the years of working in media, I found myself increasingly pushed and even coached to strongly state my opinion about what would happen.

It occurred to me that this was kind of silly. As a reporter, I was trained to tell people what happened (past tense), using both my own observations and interviewing subjects whose first-hand experience and perspective could explain why these events occurred. Now I was being pushed to predict what would happen either in future games or with contract negotiations. It feels very similar to someone being hired for their skills in farming and then being instructed that what was actually required in this job was to cook.

Going forward, I’m going to spend less time trying to anticipate what the team will do. That’s probably advisable when you consider just how off-guard I was caught by the events of the past week, but I think this is more than just a question about expertise.

Uncertainty is part of what makes sports so freaking fun. I don’t know who the Seahawks are going to sign to replace Geno Smith at quarterback, but I’m really eager to find out.