Quote:
Originally Posted by teedubya
Alex Smith hasn't been horrible... his receivers and OL have been.
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Disagree.
80% of his passes this season have not gone more than 10 yards past the LOS. Some of this is by design, but I cannot believe that 80% of our passing plays are specificly designed to not gain more than 10 yards. He's taking the safe, easy checkdown rather than making the read and delivering a football that one of our guys has a shot to make a play on.
Alex will ALWAYS take a 1-2 yard pass to an open checkdown over a chance at a big play where his man is one on one.
When he does go downfield (5% at 20+ yards), they are overthrown, or thrown into the dirt at the feet of the receiver.
Alex has also missed so damn many wide open receivers that its simply inexcusable to keep letting that go unaddressed.
Take the play last night where Charles lined up on the linebacker one on one. Huge matchup, and just as Charles released off the line and began to get a step on his man, Alex had already thrown the football into the dirt 1.2 seconds after taking the snap.
He never once considered Charles as an option. He certainly never made a pre-snap read, and once the ball was snapped, he never even began any sort of progression, he just chunked it into the dirt.
Alex needs all the improvement he can get. Andy's hilarious press conference comments about this being a "young team" as the reasoning for the ineptitude of the offense has seriously shaken my opinion of his ability to reason.
Alex Smith is not a young quarterback. Hes been in the league for several years now, and if he hasn't learned how to identify mismatches in coverage, and if he hasn't found the confidence to forego that safe checkdown and put the ball up downfield for his guy to have a shot at some real yardage, then he's likely not going to. He's 29 years old.