Quote:
Originally Posted by Saccopoo
Smith is an intelligent player with good mechanics and game understanding who would be a good tutor/mentor to a rookie for the next year or two.
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I fully believe that Smith is an intelligent person. But I've never seen much that would cause me to think he's an intelligent football player. He simply doesn't display any realtime intelligence when it's necessary on the field. He consistently stares down his first option, to the point that defenders completely abandon their responsibility and simply follow Smith's eyes. Here's a perfect example. Look at how the two safeties follow his eyes to the checkdown, and leave a WR streaking uncovered up the middle:
There are countless more examples of this. At the first sign of any pressure, his decision making falls apart. If his first read isn't open, he has considerable difficulty adjusting to any other outcome. Generally he'll simply take off running. Many times all it takes is just the phantom anticipation of pressure to cause him to abandon the pocket. And he's simply terrible once he does leave the pocket. His vision is reduced to the point that defenses start crowding the box and let receivers run wild.
He may have considerable intelligence as a person, but his lack of confidence and fear of mistakes negates every single bit of that once he gets any whiff of pressure on the field.