McCarthy got hired away as the head coach as the Green Bay Packers, but if that's getting fired, then I certainly hope to get fired in that way.
Norv Turner improved Smith's play. I think he had like an 83 rating his season with Norv.
He was bad for years because he was getting yanked in and out of the lineup because he didn't get along with Nolan and no coach afterward had any investment in him to get better.
It's insanity to me that you can say over and over that bad coaching wasn't a problem for Smith, but now that he has good coaching he's somehow a good quarterback. What's changed for Smith, besides getting good coaching?
Is tape of Smith playing in Mike Martz's offense really the difference between Alex Smith in 2010 and Kevin Kolb? Are you for real?!
Yes, good coaches tailor their offenses to their personnel. That's what Harbaugh's doing. That's what Whisenhunt isn't doing. I'm certain that #7 could be just as productive as Smith is right now if we'd run a system that played to his strengths, instead of Whis's system which plays to no one's strengths.
part of the problem is you jump around so much. yes McCarthy wasn't fired, but he also clearly wasn't a bad coach, if he was GB wouldn't have hired him and they wouldn't be the defending SB champs 5-0 this year would they? But you just ignore that part of it and jump on the mistake about fired.
He had a good coach as a rookie and played horribly. He had a good second year coach and played passably. Hostler was supposed to be a happy medium but Smith couldn't do what he wanted and then had the injury.
By my count the guys he had as OC's have a combined 4 Super Bowl wins and I think 5 Superbowl appearances. Man what a horrible group of OC's.
yes changing OC's every season is tough, it's insanity to me that you can keep saying changing OC's hurt Alex Smith and then in the next sentence dismiss anybody saying Kolb is learning a new system as just making excuses. I'm just a bit more polite when I point it out usually.
He was getting yanked for years because he was terrible and his teammates had no confidence in him. You don't go from #1 overall pick to losing your job to Shaun Hill just because of bad coaching, it was quite simple and well documented in the Bay Area, the team believed in Hill so they made the switch. There was debate as to whether Smith was undermined or not, but the team wanted Hill, that was very clear.
Smith is playing quite well right now but he's also being asked to do very little, he averages less than 200 YPC passing. NFL.com doesn't have the detailed splits yet but I would bet he plays with multiple TE's more than most NFL Qb's do, it's a staple of the Harbaugh system because you force teams to play their run package to stop Gore, and then get mismatches with your TE's against their LB's. it's great coaching yes but it's also a way to minimize what they ask Smith to do.
It'll be interesting to see when they get Edwards back if they open it up or not, my guess is they probably won't.
I don't know if you can win a Super Bowl with Alex Smith, they have a good defense and great RB and teams have certainly won SB's without good QB's before, but it's tough.
But it's a lot easier to play QB with SF's defense than it is with Arizona's, you don't go into the game thinking I gotta put up a lot of points to win.
I'd still take Kolb over Smith any day of the week, I've seen Smith play too much, at some point they're going to have to ask him to do some things to win some games and we'll see then if he's really improved or not.
A big thing for Smith is he's played so much more than Kolb he's had time to get through the stuff Kolb is going through now. It's not Kolb's fault he didn't play more in Philly and I certainly don't want to wait as long for Kolb as SF had to wait for Smith, but I think 5 games is a bit short to write him off.
Smith spent the lockout leading workouts with the SF offense, Kolb spent the lockout in limbo waiting for a trade to happen, who do you think had the advantage?
