In two seasons with the New York Jets, Geno Smith has had four backups -- Michael Vick, David Garrard, Brady Quinn and Matt Simms, who was released on Thursday. Also Thursday, one of the Geno Four -- all of whom are unemployed -- offered his opinion on Smith, painting a less-than-flattering picture of the Jets' quarterback.

It was Garrard, who appeared on the NFL Network's "NFL Total Access" show.

"I definitely think Geno has the ability to be a pretty good quarterback. I just think sometimes he’s worried about the outside noise," Garrard said. "He’s worried about what his teammates think, what his coaches think, what the media thinks, what the fans think and he’s not just concentrating on his game and just making the plays that he should be making. You can see a lot of times in practice and in the meeting room, he’s spot on; he knows exactly what to do. But he has moments where he’s not doing that."

Garrard was a thoughtful, well-respected player in his career (he retired recently), but he wasn't around Smith last year. His comments are based on a two-month stretch at the end of the 2013 season, when he was brought in to be Smith's big brother, basically. It hardly makes him a Geno-ologist, but Garrard's opinions shouldn't be dismissed entirely.

In essence, Garrard said Smith's poor decisions never showed up on the practice field.

"No, because you don’t have the stress of everybody looking at you and seeing exactly what you’re doing," he said. "But when he gets out there on game day, he has great plays, but then he just has too many bonehead mistakes where we didn’t see those things at practice. 'Why are we seeing them now in game time?' He has to fix those before he can be a great quarterback."

Great? At this point, the Jets would settle for competent. Barring injury, Smith is expected to be the opening-day starter because, no matter how Todd Bowles spins it, Smith is the odds-on favorite to emerge from the faux competition.