49ers 2010 Season Opener: In Alex Smith We Trust?

Whether you are for Alex Smith or against Alex Smith, as a 49ers fan, you really have no choice but to be FOR Alex Smith. You have no alternative. David Carr? Um, no thank you. Nate Davis? Ehh, don’t think so. Jarret Brown? Uhh, who?

If the 49ers are to return to their rightful throne and rekindle thoughts of a gloried past you wish, errrrr, you hope, errrrrrrrr, you NEED Alex Smith to become a star. You NEED him to live up to his number one draft status, you NEED him to vindicate his selection over hometown hero Aaron Rodgers six years ago and you NEED him to take your 49ers to the playoffs for the first time in seven all -to-long years!


You need him because you have no choice. Your desperate. Your team, led by Coach Pants on the Ground, is ready. It has arrived. It is dripping with talent. It has a roster ready to go at every position, and it is sitting there waiting for a quarterback to grab it by the horns, rip it away from mediocrity and propel it into the national spotlight where it rightfully belongs.

And the only person who can do it is Alex Smith.

Over the course of human history, desperation has been at the root of every single cause of poor judgment: Why did you rock a bowl cut in the sixth grade? Because you were desperate to look cool. Why did you think Hot Tub Time Machine was funny? Because you haven’t seen a good comedy in god knows how long. Why did you scarf down Taco Bell at 3 in the morning last night? Because you were ten tequila shots and a 12 pack of natty light past coherency and desperate for a deep fried heartburn and some raging diharia!

And that’s were you are right now. Desperate. Desperate for a quarterback. Desperate for Alex Smith.

The memory of Joe Montana, if it was ever there, is gone and Steve Young’s is starting to fade. Jeff Garcia seems like a lifetime ago and recently you have been talking yourself into Michael Vick.

So you force yourself to believe. You disregard what your eyes have shown you on your over sized high def television, blocking from memory every time Alex Smith overthrows an open receiver or clumsily losest control of the ball in his undersized hands. You begin to believe the hype. Suddenly you rely on info you obtained from obscure 49er discussion boards and "insider" tips you vaguely remember overhearing during last nights beer pong tournament.

“Wait, Alex Smith has never had the same coordinator in consecutive years!” “Wait, Alex Smith has never played on a good team with a good offensive line!””Whoa Alex Smith played on the same High School team as Reggie Bush” “Of course, all Alex Smith has to do is study his playbook more often “Oh yea, I forgot that Urban Meyer believes in Alex Smith!”

Well I hate to pull your pants up Mr. Singletary, but how come nobody has been asking the following set of questions?

How come Alex Smith has only played in 43 of a possible 64 career games? Wouldn’t you say he is injury prone? How come Alex Smith’s career completion percentage is 56%? How come out of Alex Smith’s 43 career games he has fumbled the ball 30 times and thrown an interception an additional 43 times? How come Alex Smith’s career passer rating is a 69.2? How come Alex Smith has never won Quarterback battle out of training camp especially considering he was beaten out by a sixth round draft pick, JT O’Sullivan and an undrafted journeyman, Shaun Hill?

They say nothing predicts the future better than the past, and nothing about Alex Smith’s past inspires a bright future. Nothing he has acomplished while on the football field over his five year NFL career inspires confidence moving forward. Even when disregarding his first three years in the league, which were admittingly played on terrible teams, and only looking at last years supposed "breakout" season, there are four things that should scare you:

First, Alex Smith’s QB Rating last year against losing teams was a respectable 89.6. Yet against teams over 500 it was a 74.

This means Smith is a full 14 points worse against good teams than he is against bad ones. Throw out his 118 rating against Houston, a team with the 11th worst pass defense last year, and a game where he threw a pick on the game losing drive, and that rating sinks to a 66.4.

Second, over the final five games of the season, when the 49ers had a legitimate shot at making the playoffs, he threw 3 interceptions on a pivotal Monday night game in Arizona, followed that up with a 42 QB Rating in a must win against Philly and ended the season by throwing a grand total of 2 touchdowns against the leagues 2nd and 3rd worst passing defenses, in Detroit and than St Louis.

Third, when the 49ers were within 7 points in the fourth quarter last year, Smith had a QB rating of 55. By comparison, Matt Ryan, a comparable quarterback to Alex Smith, also on an average team had a 65 and Drew Brees had a 119.

Fourth, Alex Smith faced 6 of the 8 worst passing defenses in the league last year, and you will be interested to know how he performed.

In three of the games he performed at the league average. Against the Seahawks, Rams and Jaguars, opposing NFL quarterbacks had a QB rating of 93, 96 and 97 respectively. In those three games, Alex Smith had ratings of 95, 97 and 96.

Respectable, yet average.

However, against the other three teams, the Titans, the Bears and the Lions, when the rest of the NFL had a QB rating of 91, 92 and 107, Smith threw a 69, a 63 and a 97, a full ten points lower than the average NFL quarterback against the leagues worst passing defense. 

Terrible, and well below average.

So do you get the feeling that you already know exactly what you have already known all along about Alex Smith?

That he is a below average NFL Quarterback. 

Same as he is. Same as he has been. Same as he always will be.

And the sad thing about it, is that you have no choice but to believe.

I have no choice but to believe.

If the 49ers are ever to return to the top of the mountain, which they so easily danced on top of just a short decade ago, Alex Smith has to be the one leading the pack, thrusting the flag into the crest of the summit.

And so we believe. Because we have to.

In Alex we trust.