Quote:
Originally Posted by Molitoth
Just because Alex has had about 5 or 6 good games out of 13 so far, doesn't mean you extend him, nope.
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That's not why you're extending him.
You're extending him because over his last 61 NFL games he's thrown over 1100 passes and with those passes he managed a line of:
80 TDs/38 INTs
QB Rating of 87.5
Completion% of 61.5
Y/A of 6.8
And if you look at what he's done this season, he's pretty damn close to that across the board. His TD/INT is a little higher, YPG is a little higher, completion% and Y/A a little lower and QB rating is almost exactly the same. None of those figures are amazing, but they're figures a bunch of teams in this league would love to get from their QB. They're absolutely figures you can win a championship with, especially if he comes cheap enough to extend and surround him with elite supplemental talent we already have.
In other words, Alex Smith is exactly who he appears to be. The guy we have this year is his baseline. Smith's shown a history of improving the longer he's in a system, so there's reason to believe he'll be even a little bit better next season.
But that's not even your gamble. Your gamble is that he'll be no worse as he plays through his prime QB years than he has been over his last 60+ NFL games and 1000+ NFL attempts. If he's no worse than that, he's absolutely worth a reasonable contract extension. Waiting another year is presumably done out of caution; the worry that he'll suddenly crater. I don't see the argument - he's established his baseline.
The risk/reward favors extending him before his walk year, IMO. There's a far greater likelihood of him improving on this year's performance than there is a likelihood of him falling below the baseline he's set over the past 5 seasons as an NFL starting quarterback.