Boy, football sure is a rough game. Alex Smith suffers through 7 1/2 years of terrible teams, frustrated fans, incompetent head coaches, and revolving-door offensive coordinators. Through it all he remained as professional as anybody possibly could in such a situation.
He led his team to the NFC Championship last season, he was one special teams play away from a Super Bowl. This season was his best ever, he's completed SEVENTY PERCENT of his passes. Despite that, he's going to lose his starting job because of an injury. It's definitely possible that Harbaugh has simply been looking for a chance to make the switch and the injury was how that chance presented itself, but if that's true then everything he said about Smith earlier was difficult to believe. Maybe he really believed it all, but still believed Kaepernick was better. Maybe Kaepernick has gotten to the point where he's better after 1 1/2 years of studying.
I gotta say that I agree with the move, but I feel like a dick for liking it. Smith has been awesome, both on the field and off. Despite that it's clear that his game has very specific limitations, and Kaepernick's game (at least at this point) appears to be less limited and have a lot more upside. I'm really looking forward to seeing how Kaepernick handles this kind of challenge, but I don't feel great about how it happened.
We all knew a switch would be made at some point, and obviously it was never going to be an easy thing to do. I really wish it wasn't the result of a concussion, it just feels weird to have it end that way. I can't help but think Alex deserved better than that given the amount of shit he's put up with from this place. Despite his limitations, I'll always like him for the way he handled himself. Here's to hoping this goes as smoothly as possible and Kaepernick's breakout game was a harbinger of things to come.
If Alex never plays here again, I'll always have a soft spot for him and endless respect for how he acted. I hope he goes somewhere else and plays well for somebody.
The future is hopeful but also a little nerve-racking. Excited to see how the kid plays on Sunday in a really really difficult environment.
