Some stories are too good to be true. They sound a bit like a fairy tale to the meat grinder which is the important professional sport. Alex Smith’s return to the Washington football team certainly qualifies.
Smith’s own physical return and heroic measures to overcome life-threatening injuries and infections and all the surgeries and incredible odds he destroyed will live on forever as one of the most unlikely and remarkable redemption stories in history modern NFL. But the idea that it was without tension, or conflict, or struggle, given everything that was happening within that long-troubled organization – the feeling that it was a collective kumbaya effort between player and team – was always naive. He denied the economy and interpersonal dynamics and the harsh realities of duty roster regulations, salary caps and payrolls. The brilliance is certainly out of that part of the story now after Smith’s candid, but hardly unexpected, remarks to the GQ magazine published this week.
And for anyone who still has the illusion that Smith has a future in Washington, after the team’s well-documented hunt for new defenders and given the obvious limitations in Smith’s game (only natural given what he went through), the fact that he has suffered another injury to his repaired leg this season, and with WFT giving Taylor Heinicke the playoff reveal … well, come on now. This is the NFL. When it comes to money and power and the inherent conflict between team and individual (ie Ben Roethlisberger versus Pittsburgh Steelers as it is now), things tend to get messy and this situation had super messy tendencies that frankly were treated better than could be expected publicly during the season.
Smith even to play required that a quarterback be replaced in the first month of the season that new coach Ron Rivera never wanted in the first place (choice of 2019 first round, Dwayne Haskins) and the guy in the system who would always have his chance to show what he could do – Kyle Allen, who played for Rivera in Carolina – getting badly injured almost immediately afterwards to put Smith into service in Week 5. It took unlikely circumstances to get this arranged marriage out on everyone, at least for a few weeks until Smith was injured.
For those who may have lost, Smith, 36, told GQ that his return “definitely affected the team’s plans”, and Washington “didn’t want me there, didn’t want me to be part of it, didn’t want me to be part of the team. , from the squad, didn’t want to give me a chance … Gee, they didn’t want me there. “Smith explained the disputes between him and the front office about the status of his squad and whether he should be on the Physically Unable list of Run or in the Injury Reserve. Of course, the timing of all this was awkward and uncomfortable. And it was understandable that the team had reservations about playing against someone who dealt with an injury that changed his life on the spot – in a year without pre-season – without knowing how it could be and how it could happen. Of course, it took a series of bizarre events to get to that point.
If any of these things really took you by surprise, what a shame; you were probably not paying much attention to the myriad factors at play. And if Smith’s blunt comment offends or baffles you, you too will be ashamed. Smith had every right, after doing what he did and going through an exhaustive recovery, largely isolated and on his own, to speak his mind and pull the curtain on any facades that others may be harboring. And if your observations made you think less about WFT – and God knows, from owner Daniel Snyder onwards, they’ve done a tremendous job of unmasking themselves and providing material for ridicule and scorn over two decades – then shame on you too, because the timing and nature of Smith’s return would always lead to complications between the individual and the new powers that existed.
What was best for Smith in terms of his singular obsession with getting back on the football field as quickly as humanly possible, in his own nature, would always conflict with Rivera’s timeline – or anyone else trying to restart it. always suffering a program in the middle of a pandemic – in an attempt to assess the players and position them in the best possible way in the short and long term. This was always strange and complicated.
No one in the medical community, or in the football world, would have thought that Smith was likely to have overcome his repeated setbacks since breaking his leg like a bear in November 2018. No one could ever believe that he would be able to walk normally. 2020, let alone start games for a football team that goes to the playoff, especially in the midst of a radical shift in terms of ownership role in the franchise and with Rivera taking over as the lead voice of the team (bringing his own quarterback with him from Carolina ) in January last year.
Rivera, while battling cancer, has already had to navigate his way through multilayered problems with Haskins – his likely starting quarterback – having trouble violating the COVID-19 protocols after most of the organization already believed Haskins was only selected like that, and only starting so early, due to Snyder’s personal role in selecting him after he played football at the same school that Snyder’s children attended. Rivera dealt with Haskins’ dilemma and eventual exit awkwardly on several occasions and received much criticism for it. But hoping that he – in his first year with a new franchise in the middle of a pandemic, with no one in the building for the whole of the off-season and barely meeting the team before week 1 – was preparing as if Smith could lead his team to the title NFC East, given everything he’s been through, is asking too much.
Smith himself knows that the only reasons he was still in Washington in 2020 were the contract and the remaining guaranteed money, as well as his close relationship with Snyder, who wanted to see this through to the end. If the perpetually clumsy former team president Bruce Allen had not hired Smith for a bloated extension after acquiring him from the Chiefs in January 2018, Smith would have left long before Snyder turned the team over to Rivera, who was fired by Carolina in 2019 and almost immediately resurfaced in Washington. And it took the WFT to explode with Robert Griffin III and Kirk Cousins to enter the Smith lottery in the first place. Despair is a fragrance that they use very well.
That is the backdrop for this Disney-style and Hollywood-style plot arc. But there has always been a weak point – largely unsaid, until now – where the hard and cold economy of professional sports is always at stake. And the WFT can now lose some $ 14 million in cap – and who knows how much more avoiding future PR problems – leaving Smith and letting the market talk about who else could hire him to play as a defender in 2021.
Smith is classy, one of the best people in the game. He is worthy of all praise. But it was, for me, quite difficult at times to see him play last year and not fear the worst, as the game gets faster, but he works. Running, pushing the ball into the field, the ability to make moves with your legs is probably asking too much. Perhaps one of his former coaches – Andy Reid or Urban Meyer – would like to have him back in a backup role.
It would be a welcome addition to any quarterback room; he is a model in all forms and forms. But getting him to step back and throw footballs at games with any regularity is another task, and I’m not sure if many teams would explore. It never made sense for Washington, seeking a long-term response in QB and still recovering, despite the rather empty title at NFC East last year, moving on with it. And right now the biggest Cinderella fan could see why.