If Alex Smith plays with a bachelor for the Washington football team this season, he deserves the Player of the Year award.
Smith’s return from a serious leg injury and nearly two years of surgery, infections and headaches promises to be the wellness story of an NFL season that will want it as much as possible, even if his return is little more than a few symbolic shots. But Smith can emerge this year as much more than a glorified quarterback coach in a helmet.
Smith, 36, gets back on the page? Why not? The other washington quarterbacks are Dwayne Haskins Jr., who comes from a bad rookie year; Kyle Allen, who has just had an even worse year replacing Cam Newton in Carolina; and rookie undrafted Steven Montez of Colorado. It’s a little distinguished, green group. Washington’s offense is unlikely to score many problems in Rivera’s first season as a coach.
But here comes Smith, riding to the rescue of a team with no name on a horse with no name while looking a little like Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name: grizzled, battered and scarred, with a way of getting the job done that isn’t often pretty. But Smith has always overcome the odds, defied the skeptics and found a way to simply survive.
Smith is now a remote memory for NFL enthusiasts. The first overall pick in the 2005 draft, he spent 3 seasons fighting for a terrible team of the 49ers, getting an 11-19 record as a starter and pitching more interceptions (31) than landing passes (19). He then lost all of 2008 with a damaged er bone, an exacerbation most likely of an injury he suffered and attempted to play in 2007.
This deserves to have been the end: two coaches, a primary injury, part of a decade of inability to take over an initial task of a who is who recruits and walks. But Jim Harbaugh replaced Singletary, brought creativity to the organization’s offense and skill, and until the end of Harbaugh’s first season, Smith led a thrilling return to the playoffs opposed to the Saints.
But Harbaugh and Greg Roman’s scheme made such great use of both Smith’s arm and his legs that the 49ers proved even harder to stop when the faster, stronger-armed Colin Kaepernick was in the huddle. Kaepernick quickly earned a promotion from Wildcat wrinkle to starter, Smith slid to the bench, and the 49ers came within a fourth-quarter goal-line stand of winning Super Bowl XLVII.
Being on the bench and being outperformed in a Super Bowl race, Array deserves to have been the end. But the Chiefs’ new head coach, Andy Reid, needed a quarterback, so he traded two second-round picks for Smith. The intelligent, cellular and experienced Smith was best compatible with Reid’s West Coast evolutionary offense. Smith took the Chiefs to the playoffs four times and won three spots in the Pro Bowl. But Patrick Mahomes arrived.
Smith was sent to Washington, 6-3 as a starter in the first part of the 2018 season, then suffered compound and spiral fractures in the tibia and fibula in a collision with J.J. Watt and Kareem Jackson. This injury followed sepsis, necrotizing fasciitis (“carnivorous disease”), skin grafts, muscle transfers and serious discussions about amputation. Smith spent months undergoing surgery and dressed in what looked like steampunk clothing on his leg.
ThisArrayArray deserves to have been the end. Still, here we are: a healthy Smith can be the most productive quarterback on the football team list.
Smith’s most recent comeback puts his entire career in perspective. At his most productive time with the Chiefs and the 49ers, he was underestimated and classed as a formula quarterback with a polka dot arm, someone smart enough to lose wildground games. At his worst, the long initial phase of his career, he was ejected from the bar for being a first-round bust, while he was actually held back by sharp and defensive trainers as he sought to propel himself through injuries. For 18 months, it was little more than a background presence flowing around the team’s amenities on crutches, which is pleased to see walking, not looking ahead to be back in the field.
Smith is the ultimate survivor. He persisted in almost everything the NFL can throw at a player for 15 years. He pitched for 34,068 yards, a 94-66-1 record as a starter and led six innings in the playoffs. It’s not wonderful all the time, however, there have been few quarterbacks in history like him. It’s a bad concept to underestimate you or bring your most recent comeback as an inspiring story.
Forget the backing player of the year: Alex Smith will be eligible for an all-time backup player award. But he can also do much more this season: earn an initial job, win games, lead by example (who better than Smith to teach Haskins that, as the most productive hope, he would possibly have to face organizational and festival problems for years). Aide Rivera has set the tone for a young team and provides enthusiasts with an explanation of why look at a team that can’t even be identified to locate a name.
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