Alex Smith! Kevin Kolb! It's The Check Down Bowl On NBC!

Your San Francisco 49ers are in a bind.

A season that was supposed to culminate with playoff glory has gotten off to an 0-4 start, thanks to a few costly red zone turnovers, some clueless coaching and a boneheaded fumble last week by cornerback Nate Clements.

I wouldn't say that all hope is lost for the folks at 4949 Centennial Blvd at Santa Clara, but boy are they happy the San Francisco Giants are in the playoffs.

That Tim Lincecum was something last night, huh? 14 strikeouts and 31 swings and misses by the Braves overall. He had Atlanta batters flailing helplessly all game.

It makes you wonder what kind of pitcher 49ers quarterback Alex Smith would've been, since he too seems to have a knack for throwing a ball to different spots than people expect.

Through four games Smith is your NFL co-leader with seven interceptions, along with, coincidentally enough, former 49ers quarterback Shaun Hill, who's been pressed into duty for the also win-less Detroit Lions because starter Matthew Stafford's shoulder isn't made of titanium after all.

Going into the season if you told Niners coaches and fans that Smith would be a notch above of Brett Favre in QB rating, everyone would've gladly taken it no questions asked. Well, as we zoom past the quarter pole here, Smith has posted a 66.1 rating, which is below his humble career mark of 68.9. 

Smith ranks 27th in the league among qualifiers, but hey, Favre is 28th, so there you go.

Despite their awful record, all hope is not lost for the local gridironers. You know you're in the right division when all your co-leaders are a grateful 2-2 and a rookie with a 1:1 touchdown-to-interception ratio and a 72.3 QB rating is being hailed as a shiny beacon of hope. 

Eventually Sam Bradford and his St. Louis Rams will have to play somebody decent, though I have no idea when that will be.

Though a layman might think that being in the NFC West is all the good fortune any team could possibly ask for, the 49ers have gotten a bonus gift in that Michael Vick will miss Sunday night's game after being treated like a tube of toothpaste by the Washington Redskins last week.

Vick has a rib cartilage issue and while I don't know precisely what that is, it sounds most unpleasant.

In his stead the Niners will get Kevin Kolb, who was supposed to be the Eagles franchise quarterback of the future and was the main reason they sent Donovan McNabb, the team's all-time leader in every category, including yards, touchdown passes, wins, inappropriate smiles, lingering grudges against the fans and postseason failures, packing.

Then Kolb played one half of bad, skittish football against the Green Bay Packers while also suffering a concussion. In came Vick, who almost pulled out that game and played wonderfully the week after against Hill's Lions, and just like that, Eagles coach Andy Reid hitched his wagon to a new QB.

That plan worked splendidly, for a week, and now it's Kolb again, trying to survive behind a terrible line. The locals were mighty displeased with him after the Redskins game because he routinely ignored receivers DeSean Jackson and Jeremy Maclin, who were open downfield, to throw safe passes to running back LeSean McCoy and fullback Owen Schmitt.

Yes, that Owen Schmitt, the guy who was so excited to be a Seattle Seahawk last year that he bashed himself in the forehead repeatedly with his own helmet during pregame introductions, with predictable results.

Kolb definitely has a different playing style than Vick and McNabb, though he's an underrated runner and is unafraid to pick up some yards with his feet. He prefers short passes and quick timing routes, which is perfectly fine in the grand tradition of the West Coast Offense.

Unfortunately, it doesn't suit the strengths of Jackson, the team's best playmaker, or his counterpart Maclin, at all. Those guys are thin, frail, and not particularly enamored with the notion of getting up close and personal with middle linebackers. They want to run fly patterns, or posts, or maybe bubble screens.

They do not want to run slants into the teeth of the defense.

Meanwhile, back in San Francisco, the 49ers "offense" has mutated into this hideous thing where they need two completions, or perhaps even three, to make a first down.

Mercurial receiver Michael Crabtree has considerable skills, but is not a burner, while Josh Morgan is even less frightening. Ted Ginn has missed the past three games with a knee injury, and has shown nothing but poor hands and an aversion to contact during his career with the Miami Dolphins.

There's just no one to stretch the field, and worse, Smith seems perfectly happy with that. He's already completed 29 passes to Frank Gore (ten more than to his second leading target, tight end Vernon Davis), which is good for fourth in the league.

New offensive coordinator Mike Johnson bought Gore some room with a couple of shotgun draws and called a couple of clever screens for Davis, but for the most part just like predecessor Jimmy Raye, he couldn't get Smith to attack the defense.

"We had certain plays that we designed to go down the field," explained Johnson, "but that’s a very good defensive front, Atlanta Falcons. We didn’t call a lot of the things that we had up because of the protection issues that we had."

Smith echoed Johnson's sentiments while defending his decision making. "A lot of the times there are shots built into every play but as a quarterback you’re taking what the defense gives you," he said. "We have reads and progressions and based on what they’re doing sometimes, you get the opportunity to take a shot and other times you don’t."

Alex, Alex, Alex...

You're already 0-4, you've already thrown seven interceptions, and absolutely no one outside of your immediate family thinks you'll ever be able to turn your career around in San Francisco, if anywhere at all.

At this point why don't you just let the chips fall where they may, damn the torpedoes and let fly? What do you have to lose?

Under their current configuration, any mistake, whether it's a sack, a dropped pass, a holding penalty, a false start or a run for no gain is enough to stall a 49ers drive.

They're so dependent on moving incrementally down the field, like a child sneaking one piece of candy out of the drawer at a time in the hopes that his parents won't notice; that being put into a 1st-and-20 or a 2nd-and-16 is an automatic death sentence.

Both Smith and his coaching staff seem to think the short passing game is his strength, but that has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be a fallacy. It's what he's been trying to do his entire pro career and it hasn't worked. What more evidence do we need?

I'm not sure Smith has a strength, but if he does, it's not short, accurate passing, which wasn't McNabb's strength either. It may, however, be Kolb's strength. Time will tell.

It's interesting that Smith has made 41 more starts in his career than Kolb (44 to 3), yet Niners fans have been on the whole far more patient with him than Eagles fans have been with Kolb. Perhaps it's an indication of the difference in attitude and perspective of the respective fan bases.

There's no way Eagles fans would've tolerated 44 games worth of poor quarterback play that Smith has given the Niners. They haven't even given Kolb four games, for crying out loud.

Then again, fans in San Francisco would be pretty grouchy too if their football team hasn't won a championship in 50 years.

It's worth nothing that despite their massive disparity in experience, that Kolb, 26, is only three months and change younger than Smith.

Maybe the best solution of all would be a change of scenery for both men. The Eagles should trade Kolb to the 49ers in the off season for a second round pick, and who knows, maybe he'll thrive throwing hitches and slants to big, slow receivers.

Smith could then sign as a free agent with the Eagles to be Vick's backup, and Reid could encourage him to use his legs more and to sling the ball down the field. Smith doesn't have Vick's cannon, but he's got a stronger arm than Kolb.

Who wins on Sunday may very well come down to which quarterback finds enough courage to target his outside receivers and take some chances outside of the hash marks.

Or maybe Patrick Willis will just find a soft spot in McCoy's flak jacket, and try to make his broken rib a bit more uncomfortable than it already is.

The Pick: 49ers 23, Eagles 20 (Record 0-4)