|
URBAN MEYER on Alex Smith:
In a question and answer session with The Sacramento Bee, Meyer, now a college football analyst at ESPN, revisited his 2005 comments and spoke about Smith's resurgence.
Why do things seem to be different this year with Smith?
"I follow the NFL a lot with Alex, Tim [Tebow] and other players. It's amazing to me in the NFL that if you're on a really bad team — bad offense, bad defense, bad kicking game — then it's the quarterback's fault.
"Alex was like my son. I was real close to Alex. I watched coordinator after coordinator come out of there. The defense was ranked near the bottom every year. It's a really bad team. And all of a sudden, it's, 'Well, Alex can't play.' And I'm thinking, 'What are you talking about? Alex certainly can play.' It's the same thing with Tim.
"So quarterbacks, they get far too much credit and far too much blame. The best thing about Alex right now — he's on a really good team with a really good coaching staff, and he's a member of a team. I give so much credit to that. I don't know the whole situation, but they're playing really good football."
Did he ever express frustration to you after leaving Utah?
"Oh, I spoke with him and with his mom and dad — we're really close. And, yeah, he was frustrated. You know, he's a perfectionist. He's a guy that grasps things so fast. He wants to learn and he's a relentless worker. So he was very frustrated. He was used to winning. He did it in high school. He had a great high school program.
"Then he goes to college and won a lot of games. The biggest frustration was losing. He really liked Norv Turner. When Norv Turner was there it was like a second life for him. And then Norv left to be a head coach and it just devastated him [Smith]. But he always stayed positive. He always wanted the best for San Francisco."
Did he or his family talk to you about the decision to remain in San Francisco after the 2010 season?
"A little bit. He had really liked Mike Singletary. He was a loyal person. That's the way he was raised. He really wanted to see it through. The San Francisco 49ers gave him a lot by making him the first pick."
You said he grasps things so fast. Doesn't that run counter to what you said about him in 2005 about him being "nonfunctional"?
"Mentally, he's on a different plane. He graduated from college in two years. I've always said he has like a photographic memory when we game-planned with him. But he went through so many different coordinators in San Francisco that he would try to — I don't want to say overanalyze it — but it was like … he made the comment to me going into his sophomore year that, 'I fully grasp everything in the system.'
"My comment, when they first drafted him in San Francisco, is that he wants to know every little thing about quarterback. He's a perfectionist. He wants to know why, what everyone's doing on the field. And if everything kept changing on him, it would be very slow. That's probably what's happening now without knowing the whole story. From what I understand, he's very comfortable with the system."
Knowing what you know about Jim Harbaugh, do you think he and Smith are a good pairing?
"One thing about Alex — he's a tough guy. We ran him a lot. We would always start the game, when I was coaching Alex, he would want to run off-tackle power with him carrying the ball. And he would just drop his pads and get in there. How many quarterbacks do you know who do that?
"Jim Harbaugh's that kind of coach. He wants tough guys. So that made perfect sense."
He also went on to say that Alex throws the best deep ball of any QB he has ever coached.
|