Scott McCloughan's Latest Decision for San Francisco 49ers Might Be His Last

The problem with being an armchair QB—and God knows we all are one—is that watching ESPN and reading the sports page everyday isn’t the kind of qualified research needed to make multi-million dollar football decisions. You know the kind of decisions that GMs have to make every day. Like 49er GM Scott McCloughan’s recent free agency acquisition of David Carr. 

Carr (like Alex Smith) has been uniquely judged by being the No. 1 overall draft pick.  Unfortunately, Carr’s proverbial high-expectation bubble that came with being the No. 1 overall pick (like Smith’s and many others) popped like a teenage pimple.

The question is not whether Carr (or Smith for that matter) is worthy of a No. 1 overall draft pick, after-all Peyton is one of the few QBs that has ever lived up to that hype, the real question is whether McCloughan made a good decision about Carr?

Fans probably wanted a Donovan McNabb type signing and who can blame them?  They’ve been spoiled by QBs like Montana, Young and even Garcia. There's just not a lot of QBs with that type of success in the NFL free agency market. So given what’s possible, McCloughan may have made a good decision.

Armchair QB critics have seen and read about David Carr’s sacks and lost games, but Carr was arguably the victim of a bad offensive line and a new NFL franchise that was finding its way. His production outside the first two years is actually fairly decent.

And throwing out the first two years is reasonable given it takes a QB awhile to get acclimated to NFL caliber defenders. Even 49er Hall-of-Famer Steve Young in his first two years had a QB rating of only 61.

Anyway, Carr’s QB Rating for year three onwards (weighted by games played) is about 83. That’s not that bad of a QB Rating. Looking at NFL QB ratings from last year, Carr’s rating would have been ranked right in middle, ahead of such names as Jay Cutler, Matt Hasselbeck, Vince Young, Matt Ryan, and yes Alex Smith.

In fact, he would have been ranked around as high as Carson Palmer, but without Palmer’s burdensome salary. And the last two years Carr’s QB ratings (albeit under very limited playing time) have been 144 and 94—as good as the best in the league.

Given Carr was brought in as a back-up and has plenty of playing experience, it seems like Scott McCloughan made a fairly decent decision. Carr is an inexpensive insurance policy in case Smith doesn’t work out.

The bigger question regarding McCloughan’s decision making is not Carr at all but Alex Smith. We know Smith’s stats are poor. Even taking out his first two years in the league, his QB ratings were only 57 and 82—hardly anything to get excited about.

And anyone who has watched Smith’s games knows that his stats are actually inflated by completions and touchdowns made against second string defenders—and after the opposing teams have already manhandled him in the first half of games.

However, even hoping that last year’s QB rating of 82 is the beginning of improvement, the question is whether Smith can ever be the next Montana, Young, or Garcia? Those are high expectations but for 49er fans, who have been spoiled with unprecedented years of Super Bowl wins and playoff appearances, nothing less is acceptable.

Unfortunately, the fans have been waiting for that question to get answered for going on five years. They hope this year will be the last.  If not, they probably will be asking the exact same question but instead of asking it about Smith they will be asking it about Carr—and the proverbial sand clock will start anew. Would fans be able to handle that? Probably not, which is why the Carr decision of McCloughan’s might be his last?