Originally posted by carlgo:
Smith would have been better if he had been brought up to a perfect environment.
If he went to almost any other team now he would be better than he has been here.
But, "better" is really just sort of ok. His touch, his accuracy, the quickness of release, the intuition is not up with the best of them. He would have been sort of average and some guy would have come along and dethroned him after a couple of years and he would have a career as an often-traded backup.
Here, nobody was allowed to compete with him, one of the strangest things in the history of the game. If there had been open and honest competition here, Smith probably would have be replaced some time ago.
Actually, the no-competition thing is so awful that I feel sorry for Smith. That bonehead idea wasn't his fault and makes him look really bad. I don't buy into any idea that he is mentally weak or any of that garbage, just that he isn't the savior type.
Smith at the top of his game is just as good as any QB. We've seen it every year he has played but just in some games or bits of games. It's the consistency that Smith haters don't like. Smith has the ceiling to be a very good NFL QB. It is a question whether that will ever happen.