I honestly do believe in Smith. I sound like a broken record but here it goes. 1) He should not have started for a few seasons coming into the NFL. He came from a sub par conference and an Urban Meyer led offense that played nothing similar to an NFL style of football. He needed time to learn the speed of the game and to adjust some of his mechanics. He always had the physical and mental tools. 2) Yes early on he had Vernon Davis but you can't throw the ball to him every play. His receivers were so bad that some of us could have gotten try outs probably. 3) He had to learn a new offense every year and until last almost none of them were tailored to his strengths at all because after his first two seasons there was question of whether he should be their QB or not. He never should have started those first two years. Never. It set them back another 3-4 seasons by doing so. His confidence was rattled and he needed to rebuild it. Where as if he had sat a couple years and come into an offense designed for him he could have had success. 4) He is a perfect fit for a Philbin offense. He runs the bootleg well and has great short accuracy. His early offenses were more vertical based with seam and post routes. Last season with a more friendly offense to his skill set he completed 61% of his passes. Read his rookie scouting report and tell me it does not scream Philbin. I personally will support him 100% maybe even buy a jersey.
He was only 28th in the league in passes per game yet he led the league in sacks. He is not very good.
I had no idea we were signing him to play offensive line. Now if you want to show me some evidence the sacks were caused by him holding the ball too long go ahead I'll certainly entertain that. Until then that shows me nothing except the San Fran offensive line was terrible. Also seeing as I have connections to a screen printer, if we sign Alex Smith I am totally getting a shirt that says Alex Smith: Small Hands, Big Balls.
I watched Smith quite a bit last year, and it looked at times he willingly took sacks instead of forcing the ball (a big reason why he only threw 5 INT). He got pretty decent protection all season. He does hold the ball too long. If you look up "game manager" in the video dictionary, you'd see a bunch of Alex Smith 2011 clips.
I believe Alex Smith benefitted from exceptional coaching in Jim Harbaugh. Absent that, he is mediocre at best, IMVHO.
I believe we're gettin Barkley next year. Been following thru thick and thin, regardless. i just dunno WTF to make of this mess. Poor Philbin. Prolly a good, solid guy. We're gonna fackin ruin him.
Well I'd honestly rather him willingly take sacks than throw interceptions. Obviously you want him to throw the ball away rather than take the sack, but of the three possibilities (Sack, INT or Throw the ball away) it isn't the worst outcome. Also since Philbin puts an emphasis on the bootleg and moving the QB around a bit he will be in a better position to get rid of the ball rather than take a sack. As far as I know the 49'er offense was didn't move Smith around when throwing on the run accurately is actually one of his biggest strengths.
This is a quarterback who had a game plan designed around limiting his passing opportunities. Personally I'd prefer a quarterback who we want to throw the ball. Also, that interception rate is not repeatable and will go up next year. Incredibly low int rates like that always go up the next year.
I don't believe in him. The best thing he did last year was not throw INTs. But INT% is not a stable metric over different seasons. I highly, highly doubt he will put up another 1.1 INT% like he did last year. But let's say he has turned the corner as far as INTs go. Last year, his YPA was .1 worse than Matt Moore. Though his AYPA was .3 higher because of the ridiculously low INTs. He was sacked 44 times and had a bad sack %. That probably wouldn't bode well for him behind our offensive line that gave up a ton of sacks with Henne and Moore. Taking into account sacks his NYPA was the same as Moore's but his ANPYA was a bit better because of the INTs. So basically, last year, Smith was Matt Moore with a 1.5% less INT rate. I'd rather stick with Moore for another year and either draft someone this year or start from scratch next year.
An extremely uninspiring choice if he is who we go with. I highly doubt he can maintain the turnover rate he had last year - it was an anomaly and like Josh Freeman last year he is bound to regress. Further, this is a QB who did not pass for 300 yards during the 2011 season. To me, that indicates a QB hidden in the system behind a strong running game and strong defense. That is not the kind of QB who will win you a super bowl. Minus that last drive against the Saints, nobody would care about him in the least. We are buying high on a statistical anomaly of a year that I just don't see being exceeded or even just equaled.
added to this great post: the poor guy had one of if not the worst pass protecting Olines on the league for much of those first 6 years hence their 2010 investment in 2 first round linemen (#11 on Anthony Davis, #17 on Mike Iupati).
Thank you! This is a quarterback who was asked not to lose games. I feel like I've entered this bizarre reality where Alex Smith is suddenly this great quarterback.
I disagree. I see a QB who had a game plan built around his strengths by a genius coach who understood how important it was to Smith's success, development, and mental psyche to gradually ease him into a new offense in order to prevent from ruining him. By the end of the season it paid off as we watched him blossom into a mentally tough QB & leader capable of carrying SanFran on his shoulders when his defense was struggling to stop Drew Brees. If Harbaugh put too much on Smith's shoulders too soon after the previous 6 years of crap that Alex experienced, there was a good chance he would've ruined the understandably fragile Smith. The most important thing for Smith in 2011 was to first instill his confidence & leadership before putting a heavy load on his shoulders, and Harbaugh understood this (and stated such).
..... and now he might learn some things from Philbin that he didn't from Harbaugh that continues to further his development.
I also want to state for the record that I'm not just going to be all in for any QB we go after. Yes I will support them, but my thinking Smith is a great fit here is due to what I see in him. I wasn't really huge on Flynn other than as competition for Moore and I'm REALLY down on Tannenhill. Not only because I see him as a bust who shouldn't be drafted in the first, but also because I don't believe his skill set will match well with what Philbin likes to do.
Are you disagreeing with San Fran's 2011 philosophy that helped get them a 13-3 season and near Super Bowl birth? Why would a successful 13-3 team with a defense that allows 14 pts per game need to throw for more than 300 yards? I've never seen someone complain about how a team wins 13 games. What's more important than "300 yards" are those 6 4th quarter victories and the 42 pass attempts & 28 total points vs the Saints when he was forced to carry the team on his shoulders. It's about "what did Smith do when he WAS asked to step up?", and in that regard he was more than "just a game manager".
How do you label him as a QB "asked to not lose games" when he helped win 6 4th quarter games? That makes no sense. If we hypothetically go 13-3 and almost make the SB with a philosophy that doesn't involve the QB airing it out all game long, will you complain about it?
If you think Sparano and co. Were conservative wait until smith is under center. I would much rather draft a guy this year or give Moore the job and shoot for Barkley next year.
One thing that we always complained about concerning Chad Henne was that he was terrible in the red zone. The 49ers were the third worst team in the NFL at red zone scoring. http://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/stat/red-zone-scoring-pct
Silly questions don't accomplish anything. I'm not arguing with the philosophy of winning with defense. I want a quarterback that an offense can revolve around. Harbaugh clearly did not see Smith as that type of quarterback. Notice how all of the top quarterbacks in the NFL throw the ball a lot? That's because they are very good and it would be foolish to limit their opportunities.
yet which QB had the best performance vs the Giants during the 4 game post season win streak and nearly replaced them in the Super Bowl?
You mean the game where he completed ONE pass to his wide receivers. The game where he had FOUR passes over 7 yards. In that game he had two touchdown passes to Vernon Davis and was absolutely awful the rest of the game. In overtime the 49ers had a chance to win the game and they went three and out.
They would have been in the superbowl and never even in overtime if their punt returner could...you know...catch punts.
True. But if he could've hit anybody on one or two of their third downs they would've walked away with that game. His whole season consisted of one read plays then dump it off to a back or hold onto the ball for a sack.
Like I said before they treated him like a rookie, because in all reality he kind of was. It was his first season starting in a position to have any sort of success. In college he played sub par defenses and ran an Urban Meyer offense. He has the mental and physical tools, but he needed to sit on the bench and learn the NFL game. They never let that happen and he struggled very poorly out of the gate. I think he is going to make a huge improvement from last season to this next one, just like rookie QB's usually make big strides their second season. Also I believe he fits the Philbin offensive style to a T.
I'd be happy to answer that. Alex Smith had the 3rd best performance against the Giants. I'd say Rodgers and Brady had better performances. There numbers are clearly better. I guess you can make the argument that they each had an interception but the Packers still scored more than the Niners and the Pats scored the same so I'm not sure where you get the idea that Smith actually performed the best.
Receivers have a part to play in that, hence San Fran's need to address the position and analysts earlier projecting Mohamed Sanu to the Niners b/c of his dependability as a possession receiver and ability to move the chains. As Alex44 said, Vernon Davis is great, but you can't have a successful passing game when he's your only consistent target. They brought in Edwards to help out in the passing game, but that didn't work out too well did it?
In NO REALITY was he a rookie. He had been in the league for six years and had thrown 1500 passes. Yes the different coordinators could slow development but to argue he was like a rookie is ridiculous.
Rodgers scored a TD in garbage time that boosted his stats. Prior to that it's quite arguable that Alex Smith had a better game and did so with inferior overall surrounding talent.
