Geno Smith already in Seahawks weight room working for 2023. Now about that defense...

Geno Smith said minutes after his and the Seahawks’ season ended in California this weekend that his next season had already started.

Even though his contract had just ended. Even though he was still in Santa Clara. He wasn’t yet on the team flight back home from Seattle’s season-ending playoff loss to the San Francisco 49ers Saturday.

“Out of all the great things that we did — all the accolades, all the great stats — there’s still so much room for improvement, so many ways we can be so much better,” Smith said Saturday evening.

“And I believe it starts with me. The new season for me starts today.”

Sunday was locker clean-out day back at Seahawks headquarters. Strong safety Ryan Neal was in the team’s weight-training room for his end-of-the-season meeting with the strength and conditioning staff.

“I’m in the weight room checking out, and guess who’s in there working out? Geno,” Neal said Sunday morning.

It was about 12 hours after the Seahawks landed home to fans lining roadways to cheer them past late Saturday night.

“Mother------- are hungry,” Neal said.

“We are hungry.

“It sets the tone. When your quarterback is doing it, when your leader is doing it, everybody follows suit.”

Smith, 32, could go to free agency in March to test his value in the open market. He hasn’t had a multiyear contract since the first NFL one he signed as a rookie with the New York Jets in 2013. Since then, it’s been a series of one-year contracts and minimum salaries while a backup for seven years and four teams.

Until now.

This was his first career Pro Bowl season. Saturday was his first career playoff start for a Seattle team the rest of the league discarded as supposedly awful after it sent away Russell Wilson and Bobby Wagner last spring.

Now Smith is on track to be a multiyear starter about to sign a multiyear deal with the Seahawks.

Smith said Saturday night he wants to retire with Seattle.

“I’m in it for the long haul,” he said.

When Pete Carroll was asked if he expected Smith to be his quarterback for the 2023 season, the coach said “I hope so. I hope so.”

Ryan Neal’s contract

Like Smith, Neal’s contract is ending. Because he has far less time in the league, the safety can only be a restricted free agent. That means the Seahawks could match any other team’s offer to the 27-year-old safety.

It may not get to that. Carroll, defensive coordinator Clint Hurtt and the Seahawks love Neal’s spirit, his open-field tackling and his grit in the last two seasons replacing injured Jamal Adams at strong safety. Neal played through a knee injury the latter half of this season, then had to miss three games. He returned Saturday to start against the 49ers.

Neal said he needs a clean-up surgery on his injured knee. He said he will have that soon.

As for the contract, the Seahawks’ defense can use all the tacklers and grit it can find. It got ransacked again Saturday, for 505 yards and 41 points by San Francisco. The defense subverted much of what Smith (a team-record 4,282 yards passing) and Kenneth Walker (1,050 yards rushing in only 11 starts, with Curt Warner in 1983 the only Seattle rookie 1,000-yard rushing seasons) did.

The defense is why the Seahawks weren’t better than 9-9, and why they had to play at mighty, second-seeded San Francisco as the last playoff seed in the NFC.

Asked what has to change to improve the defense, captain Quandre Diggs said the unit greatly missed not having Adams playing with him in the back. He said many of the schemes and alignments the Seahawks worked on in training camp last summer with Adams and Diggs as the safeties got shelved. They went unused after Adams tore his quadriceps tendon and injured his knee in the first half of the opening game against Wilson’s Denver Broncos in September.

Diggs also said Seahawks defensive players need to know and do their own jobs better in 2023.

“I mean, as you see, we’ve got to eliminate big plays,” Diggs said, after San Francisco had 11 explosive plays (passes of 16-plus yards, runs of at least 10 yards) in rolling over Seattle Saturday. “Explosives lead to points. We saw that first-hand (Saturday).

“For us, you’ve got to understand what your task is, every game. That’s just part of it. If you are hook guy (intermediate routes versus the secondary’s zone coverage), take care of your hooks. If you are a seam and post guy (deep passes down the middle), you’ve got to take care of those.

“I think you just have to understand what your job is on each and every play. Every play your role may change. It’s for you to understand that.”

Seattle owns four of the first 52 picks in this spring’s draft to fix the defense. The Seahawks have Denver’s first-round pick, at fifth overall. Seattle’s own choice is currently 20th. The team also has picks 37 and 52.

If Tampa Bay beats Dallas in another NFC wild-card playoff game Monday night in Florida, Seattle’s own picks will move up the 19th and 51st spots in rounds one and two.

Al Woods coming back

The other co-captain of the besieged defense is Al Woods. The big defensive tackle is a husband, a father and a rancher. Woods owns a nearly 40-acre ranch outside Elton, Louisiana. He’s a third-generation rancher in his family.

He turns 36 in March. Yet Woods told The News Tribune Sunday he’s coming back to fulfill his contract that runs through the 2023 season.

““Oh, yeah,” Woods said on his way to the team’s end-of-season meeting, which began with Carroll blaring Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” through the walls of the Seahawks’ main auditorium.

“I can’t go out like that. I’ve got to finish what I started.”