Originally posted by niner4life21:
Originally posted by mastahyee:
Originally posted by BobS:
Originally posted by oldman9er:
Originally posted by BobS:
Alex Smith gets the unconditional love that would come from someone's grandma around here, it makes no sense to me. I could care less if he is a nice guy and a hard worker, he does not get positive results. He is a Ryan Leaf with out the attitude. No other team in the history of the NFL have kept a first round QB bust as long as the 49ers have kept Alex Smith, the most they last is 2 or 3 years, not 6 years.
There's a reason for that, Bob. It's because this is a very rare situation involving a QB that was horrifically developed thanks to an OC carousel that the NFL has never known before and then add lacking talent/tyrannical HCs/unimaginably wretched OL blocking/etc. to the mix. Every intelligent fan and talking head out there knows perfectly well that this kid was screwed over by the organization and all its failings. Listen to any of the announcers like Billick, Rich Gannon, and Gruden and when they talk of Alex, they talk of how crappy and impossible a situation he's had.
Most high draft pick QBs go to bad teams, that are in need of a complete rebuild. Troy Aikman was 0-11 as a starter, thrown in the fire on a bad team, he didn't end up emotionally damaged.
Somehow, I don't recall Jimmy Johnson playing Troy Aikman injured, blaming him for the team's problems, or not putting him in the right scheme or providing him the necessary support structure to succeed.
Who gives a s**t if Nolan threw him under the bus! That was three years ago! None of our coaches blamed him for our problems. Actually, Smith got a lot of support from his coaches here. He was never benched for his bad play. Never. In 2007, he got injured. This year, he got injured. He never had a coach who was waiting for the right moment to bench him, except maybe this year against the eagles.
And, some people here say that Singeltary hates him. WTF? I know that Sing is a piece of s**t, but he traded away Shaun Hill and did everything possible to make Alex feel comfortable in SF!
People talk all the time about creating the right conditions under which to grow and foster quarterback development with theory ranging from letting them sit a while to throwing them in the fire, but under conditions where they get protection. Part of that is atmosphere. If you don't believe in your man, why invest resources in him? The two are contradictory.
In this case, if you're Mike Nolan, it was your own damn fault that you a) let Mike McCarthy walk just because he had an awful first year b) let Norv Turner walk even though things were starting to improve c) hired Jeff Hostler in lieu of doing a real OC search d) failed to develop drafted offensive talent (Baas, Jason Hill, the list goes on and on) and failed to sign long-term offensive free agents (Antonio Bryant, Bryant Johnson, Darrell Jackson, Jonas Jennings...the list continues)? I can hardly blame Smith for these factors that are outside his control.
And yet, even when things were bad for Smith with the shoulder separation in 2007, Nolan still played him.
What is the rationale behind doing this? And yet, in spite of an obvious season ending injury and half-assed rehab, you continue to play him and proceed to criticize his play? There is something inherently unsupportive embedded in that behavior.
You are right about never being benched for bad play in the respect that in 05 he was given a rookie pass, 06 he was playing
decently, 07 he was forced to play, and play injured, and 08 he was finally out for the season. He played because we didn't know what we had in Hill in 07 until late in the season, and he didn't even get a chance in the Hill-O'Sullivan sweepstakes.
Nolan and Singletary just didn't do or don't do what it takes to cater to Smith's strengths: a spread offense with lots of well-defined options and good pocket protection. I know this is a tired argument by now but
how can you expect an organizational culture in which coaching matters to produce a product that is not coached to its strengths? There is a residual element where coaching divests bad habits from a player and builds good technique (something that Alex Smith's coaches have failed to do), but overall, a successful passing offense must rely on the strengths of its key players--there is no point in trying make them what they are not.
I don't buy the rhetoric that either coach truly enjoyed coaching Smith or had to have him, except maybe Nolan in the early years. They saw the poor statistics, correlated it to the soft demeanor and weak leadership, and nothing else. They wouldn't look at their own faults even if they bit them on the nose.
