Do You Remember the Time Geno Smith Claimed He Was ‘Too Tall’ to Fit in a Cop Car?
Geno Smith has found new life in the NFL, but his journey through the league hasn’t always been easy. His on-the-field dealings and off-the-field antics have made headlines multiple times over the years. In 2022, he was arrested for a suspected DUI after a traffic stop for erratic driving. His arrest wouldn’t have made nearly as many headlines if Smith hadn’t argued with the police that he was just too big to fit into their cruiser. Geno Smith isn’t incredibly tall.
Geno Smith insisted he was too big for a police cruiser
In January 2022, Geno Smith was pulled over in Washington state after police witnessed him speeding and driving erratically. The incident occurred on Interstate 90, with officers clocking the NFL veteran going nearly 100mph in a 60mph zone. When police approached the vehicle, they smelled both alcohol and marijuana. Smith was subsequently taken from the car and handcuffed. Washington State Police attempted to get the NFL quarterback into the back of a police car, but he resisted. That’s where things took a bit of a turn.
According to TMZ, Smith told the arresting officers that they needed to get a bigger car for him as he was just too tall to fit in their police cruiser. He argued that the car wouldn’t accommodate his “six-foot-four-inch” frame. He was eventually taken to the police station, cramped as the ride may have been, where he was tested for intoxication. As it turned out, Smith was below the legal threshold for both alcohol use and THC consumption. He was not charged with a DUI. Additional charges were dropped the following year, but his insistence that cop cars were not built for someone his size remains an infamous moment.
How tall is the NFL star?
While Smith isn’t short by any stretch of the imagination, he also isn’t ridiculously tall. Smith stands at six feet, three inches tall, according to the NFL, despite giving himself an extra inch during the 2022 traffic stop. His recorded height put him right in the middle of the pack for NFL quarterbacks. While there are taller and shorter signal-callers in the game right now, the average height of a quarterback is around six feet, three inches.
There isn’t a ton of variation, either. The tallest current quarterbacks are Joe Flacco, Justin Herbert, and Trevor Lawrence. According to NBC News, all three stand six feet and six inches tall. There is a two-way tie for the shortest QBs in the league. Kyler Murray and Bryce Young are both considered pretty short for a professional-level quarterback. They both stand 5’10. Russell Wilson, whose struggles in New York have made headlines, isn’t much taller at 5’11.
