Young Alex Smith was a nice punching bag for our jokes to land as this site launched in late 2005. He was the big-money guy who played like a guy, well, who couldn't hold onto the football very well.
Humor turned into sympathy as the guy could never really latch on. Hard to feel bad for a guy worth nearly $50 million, but the guy tried hard, failed, got hurt, continued to fail and then became a backup to Shaun Hill who is recognizable in about 4% of the country.
Is the Alex Smith we saw in Sunday's 24-21 loss to Houston the one that was worthy of a top pick? Pretty early to tell. Don Banks' snap judgment might say so. Not sure about his clock management, though.
We're relatively excited that Vernon Davis and Michael Crabtree -- two draft picks, unlike Smith, we were totally stoked about on Draft Day -- are becoming significant pieces of the passing game. (That probably constitutes a snap judgment on the Crabtree front).
Not so excited that the Niners have lost two in a row (and haven't won in three weeks). And at Indy next week. Eesh.
5 comments:
BUT HE'S GOT SMALL HANDS!!!
it's not time to jump all over the Alex Smith bandwagon yet but he re-affirmed one thing we pretty much already knew - he's much more athletically gifted than Shaun Hill - and that shows up big time in the way he throws the football - he just has a much nicer looking pass. Now when it comes to game management, clock management, pocket awareness, decision making, etc - the jury is still out about which one of these two is better.
Before Smith's injury two years ago he was starting to look like he might finally be putting it all together and he hasn't had much of a chance to play since healthy. Maybe he can really play. Time will tell.
I liked Smith coming out of Utah, but it seems hard to believe that he suddenly is good. In his entire career he has had a passer rating of over 70 for three weeks in a row......once...in September of 2006.
But who knows? Maybe he is this generation's Jim Plunkett. Plunkett was a #1 pick who was beat up badly and just needed a year off to heal so he could become a good QB later in his career. Time will tell.
Moses Malone also had "small hands" -- announcers always seem to get a kick out of announcing that.
Definitely a shocking occurrence. Smith may just have realized 50 million doesn't go too far in the NFL and now he needs to play for some contracts! Great half last week, i hope this kid ends up having a good season under center.
Pretty sad that he did everything he can and everything went wrong for him but it is part of the sport.
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