On the sideline, Smith’s teammates on defense had the utmost confidence that their work was done for the day, despite Carroll being OK with the possibility of overtime.
“Obviously everybody’s going to put the heat on Geno because he’s the quarterback,” safety Jamal Adams said. “He just rose to the challenge like he always done. He came out, he had it on his mind, he knew he was going to go out there and punch it in. The chemistry those guys have in two minutes, it’s special. Any time they get the ball, we know we have a chance.”
And not surprisingly, Smith was never thinking overtime even if his head coach told him that was an acceptable outcome going into that final drive.
“Not at all,” Smith said. “I think that was coach’s way of reminding me not to do nothing crazy with the football right there. When we’re in that situation, we’re right at home. We practice that every single day in the Virginia Mason Athletic Center. We knew exactly how much time we had, how many timeouts, just about everything that we needed to do, we knew what to do, and like I said, I feel like Shane called a great game down the stretch. DK made some tremendous plays, just being exactly who he is, and how about J-My (Jason Myers), just going in there and finishing the game off, really doing what he did, making five field goals. We needed every one of them.”
