http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/commentary/news/story?id=5684341
There are ways in which Alex Smith's situation is quite different, but I think that if #7 had received this kind of support from his teammates, he'd have been the starter. It might also be that our players simply have more faith in Whis than these guys have in Singletary.
K-9-----I totally agree that Singletary had no intention of testing Smith to see how he would respond. He fully intended to bench him and put Carr into the game. I believe too, that it was the players who made the difference with Singletary. But I don't necessarily believe that if our guys would have gone to Whiz that it would have made a difference with Matt.
Singletary and Whiz are polar opposites.
Singletary is not a cold, calculating, tangibles type of person. He is hot and firey, and emotional to the hilt. He operates on intangibles and feelings, not on numbers and measurables He, at least got the message from his players that they did not want Carr in the game-----that they felt that Smith was their best choice to win. They were probably right, because the very next series, Smith lit up the stadium with lazer sharp passes on the money for a score. It was not enough though.
With Whiz, things are totally different. I have worked for guys like him, and they can be terribly perplexing to work for. They have no feeling for the circumstance, but instead they gravitate the measurables like height, weight, arm strength, condidioning, stats, numbers, anything they can put their hands on or measure.
Guys like Whiz seldom get too high or too low at any point, because they are always trying to analyze what their next move should be. They are NOT feelings kind of people, and therefore have no feeling for the circumstance, (or for the game at hand), for that matter.
They can preach all they want that they have an open door policy. It
is open, but using it can be a terrible, even unreconcilable mistake. You can go in to talk with him, sometimes even interrupt what he is doing. He will listen to you, but he may not hear you. He might just consider that by your very presence in his office, you are in disagreement with what he wants to do, and will from then on, consider you to NOT to be a trusted ally, AND may even consider you a liability from that point on.
These type personalities can make tremendous leaders, but they can also alienate many around them, because they have no feel for things. To them things are black or they are white, and any questioning of their plan, may be grounds for removal from their trusted circle.
I believe that is exactly what happened to Matt here. He went from being Whiz's choice for QB to someone looking in from the outside, (without really ever getting a shot to prove his mettle).
People may make a lot of fun out of my taking Whiz's engineering degree to heart when he is considering ideas. Say what you want about that, but those who have those traits that I described like Whiz, make wonderful engineers. They are able to disregard all the fluff and feely stuff when they analyze something. This allows them to fix things quickly, (at least things that can be fixed with measurables). They quite often fall short however where emotions and feelings are concerned, and lets not forget, football is a game of emotions and a game of will. Sometimes the best solution to a problem is not one that can be measured or counted, or weighed. Sometimes it comes down to heart and will and gut feeling. This is where guys like Whiz just don't always truly understand what the obvious solution is.
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