Alex Smith, Team Leader?

After finishing off his 6th year in the NFL and on the 49ers this past season, I bet the last thing Smith expected to happen was to come back to the Niners. But a lot has happened since then. The Niners hired Jim Harbaugh, the NFL entered a lockout that is still going on, and the Niners drafted Colin Kaepernick to develop into their quarterback of the future. But before they drafted Kaepernick, with the lockout looming Harbaugh sensed that the Niners probably wouldn't have many options to have start at quarterback in 2011 other than Alex Smith or drafting a quarterback in a shortened off season. That's when Harbaugh came out and backed Smith for having the potential to be a successful NFL qb. You see, Harbaugh knew that it would be incredibly difficult to prepare a rookie qb to start this season without being able to tutor him for most of the off-season. The leap from college to the NFL is probably toughest to do at the qb position. Therefore Harbaugh wanted to make sure he had a veteran that knows what playing in the NFL is like and without being able to talk to free agents like Matt Hasselback because he is still technically a Seahawk, Harbaugh looked in house at Smith and saw in him the tools to be a successful qb.
Now for many Niners fans this is the last thing they wanted to hear from their new head coach who they expect to bring glory back to the franchise, but for me I love the move to bring back Smith. For the first six seasons of his career, he had a defensive minded head coach that didn't know much about the offensive side of the ball, so they hired very good offensive coordinators the first couple years, which is smart in theory, but the problem is, if you truly are a good offensive coordinator, a team is going to want to come and swoop you up to be their head coach. Smith's first offensive coordinator was Mike McCarthy. You may be asking why that sounds familiar to you, oh yeah, he's the Head Coach of the Super Bowl Champion Green Bay Packers, who hired him right after Smith's first year. He eventually tutored Aaron Rodgers, who many thought should've been the number 1 pick instead of Smith, but that's a different story, into being one of the most prolific passers in the NFL the last couple year. In Smith's second year, they brought in Norv Turner, who is a fantastic offensive coordinator, and it showed in Smith's and the offense's play in that year. But Turner, like McCarthy, was swooped up to be a head coach, this time by the San Diego Chargers. The next year, Smith was blessed(HAHA) to have Jim Hostler as his offensive coordinator. That was a lost year, along with the next year in which he was out the whole season due to shoulder surgery. In that time Mike "Physical with an F" Singletary took over as head coach and hired the very uncreative Jimmy Raye to be his pawn at offensive coordinator instead of Scott Linehan, who has done a fantastic job with the Detroit Lions offense the past couple years.


Now the Niners have have this guy at the helm, an offensive guru, a former NFL coordinator, and the man who molded Andrew Luck into the top qb in the nation. If Harbaugh sees something in Smith I believe him. Also, the Niners are moving to a west coast offense which requires having a mobile quarterback, which is one of Smith's greatest strengths. Harbaugh gave the unsigned Smith a playbook as a leap of faith that he would rejoin the team, and Smith is now doing more with this leap of faith than probably Harbaugh even expected. Smith has plans to lead minicamps with the offense while the lockout is going on. He says that now that he has a pretty good grasp of the offense, he's ready to teach it to the other positions, so that this isn't a complete loss of an off-season for the Niners. For the last couple weeks Smith has been going out daily with his receivers and throwing the ball around. All this work from Smith is very encouraging and parallels his college career. Smith credits his improvement and his success in his Junior year at Utah to all the work that he put forth in the off-season with his receivers going into that year. It's one thing to be doing all this work in the off-season, but Smith still needs to prove his worth on the field. But these are very encouraging signs that maybe Smith could be coming into his own as a leader. Another good sign that Smith is developing into a leader is the small shot that he took at Michael Crabtree about not being present at the workouts Smith has been holding this off-season. Since coming to the Niners, Crabtree has been notorious for doing the bare minimum to get ready for the season. This could be the year that Smith finally leads the Niners to a winning record and possible playoff birth, which is not too far-fetched in an extremely weak NFC West.

Here's to hoping Alex Smith Just Scores.