It's no secret by now, but San Francisco 49ers quarterback Alex Smith does not get a whole lot of respect. Sure, there are plenty of the die-hard faithful in the Bay Area that stand by their trusty QB, but even the faithful have had their moments of significant doubt where Smith's ability is concerned.
A staff report at CSNBayArea.com breaks down a recent quarterback power rankingg by NFL.com's Jason Smith, who ranked Alex Smith 25th out of 32 NFL quarterbacks. Here's what the writer has to say about the Niners QB:
25) Alex Smith, San Francisco 49ers: Again, like Dalton, the accolades weren't proportional to his accomplishments. He still only threw 17 touchdown passes in 16 regular-season games. This is Smith's ceiling, or the 49ers wouldn't have gone in as far as they did for Peyton Manning.
Here's the kicker, though: not only did players like Mark Sanchez and Jake Locker rank ahead of Smith, but Andrew Luck and Robert Griffin III -- two quarterbacks who aren't even in the league yet -- came in ahead of the San Francisco QB. Luck actually placed in at No. 16 ... a full 10 spots higher than Smith.
There's not respecting a quarterback and then there's flat-out trolling. Here are some quarterbacks that Jason Smith probably originally intended to rank higher than Alex:
- Whoever the quarterback was in the movie Lucas
- Keanu Reeves (not Keanu Reeves' character in The Replacements; the actual Keanu Reeves)
- The eagle on the back of a quarter
- Garfield, from the Garfield poster where he is dressed in a football uniform and punting Odie, who is also dressed like a football player
- 2012 Ryan Leaf
- The song "My Hero" by the Foo Fighters
- A copy of "NFL Blitz" for the Nintendo 64 where the box and instruction manual have severe water damage
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