The End of Alex Smith - It's Not Fair

The Media have written the Epitaph for Alex Smith already: 1st Overall Pick. Bust.

He is now mentioned in the same sentences as the infamous Ki-Jana Carter and Tim Couch. This is unfair when you consider the inept player and personnel management the San Francisco 49ers have displayed over the past 5 years, (probably even farther back than that). I'm not even going to blame everything on Mike Nolan, hell, he is trying to win - but his handling of Alex Smith, and the outcome is his fault and his fault alone.

So maybe there should be some more attention paid to Mike Nolan and his questioning the severity of Alex Smith's injury. Considering Smith's season is over due to arm injury, isn't it possible that if Smith had shut it down last season instead of succumbing to Nolan's pressure he might be healthy today? He probably was injured all pre-season - I mean a shoulder doesn't just snap on its' own without some warning, I would think.

Could the problem be that Nolan is a Defensive Minded Coach, who is used to telling a Linebacker with a broken wrist (or some ostensibly debilitating injury to a normal person) to get the fuck back on the field and knock the hell out of somebody? Could it be that the 49ers had Alex Smith labeled as the Next Great 49er QB, and his face and Wunderlick score posted and pasted on every available billboard in 10 counties, before he even threw a pass in the NFL? Is the "failure" rooted in the shit Spread Offense he ran in college? How about the Niners trading the only better QB on the roster (Tim Rattay) for a bag of peanuts, just because he was better than Smith and the Niners wanted Smith to be the unquestioned best QB on the team?

I think it all comes down to Smith's injury. He showed promise in his second season and a full 180 degree change from his rookie season (when he should have sat for at least 10 games, and then just relived Rattay in the other games), and then the injury and all the drama that followed.

Smith is still very rich and very young, so I will not cry for him, but I feel that "Bust" is a tough label to pin on him as far as his NFL career is concerned.

P.S. The Raiders got rolled like dough, at home, in front of 62,000 +. Suddenly the Niner's problems (though mountainous) don't seem quite so bad right now.

It's like, you got this big pile of shit in front of your door, right? But suddenly you look to your left and your neighbor has a bigger pile of shit on their doorstep. That makes you thankful that your shitpile is what it is, and your neighbor's bigger, stinkier shitpile will attract all the fly's (the Media's) attention.

But yeah, at the end of the day, all you got is two piles of shit. Go, Bay Area Football!

Sllaacs