The jury deliberation in the case of Alex Smith vs. the NFL was too hasty. Bring his name up, and anyone that knows who he is will cry "BUST" in your ear louder than Richard Ashcroft can scream "COME ON!"
To start, go on ahead and pitch his 2007 and 2008 seasons. He played with torn ligaments in his right shoulder for half of the '07 season. He injured his shoulder in a week four game. Then, during training camp in '08, Smith's best friend committed. His friend used to crash at his house all the time and became almost like a second brother to Smith. Most people would take days, even weeks, off work to recover from this, but Smith was locked in a three-way battle for the starting QB job and a responsibility to his team to compete. He ended up losing the job to J. T. O'Sullivan. He then later had surgery on his right shoulder because the wire that was in it from the previous surgery had sliced through the bone and he was put on IR. Jeffri Chadiha wrote a great article on ESPN.com about Smith and him dealing with the suicide of his best friend, and how he's ready to come back and start fresh in the NFL. http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/columns/story?columnist=chadiha_jeffri&id=4280753
So that leaves us with the Smith of '05 and '06. You can throw the Smith of '05 out, he of the one TD and 11 interception season, because he was a rookie thrown straight into the mix with no talent around, which is pretty unfair. And the Smith of '06 was the best Smith, completing 58.1% of his passes for 2,890 yards, 16 TDs and 16 INTs while starting all 16 games. Those aren't glamorous numbers that will get the attention of Jessica Simpson or Gisele Bundchen anytime soon, but they are far from West Texas, where Ryan Leaf was employed until he was arrested on drug charges.
His QB rating in 2006 (74.8) was only .6 worse than Ben Roethlisberger's. Moreover, Smith has had four different offensive coordinators in his first four years and the team is breaking in their fifth this season with Jimmy Raye II. We don't know of any successful QBs who have made it in this league with that much confusion.
The 49ers were set to release Smith before he agreed to about a 50% pay cut to remain with the team. He knew he had his best chance to start in San Francisco, and he would like to chase that.
