49ers Smith Can Still Prove He Was the Right Choice Over Rodgers

Suppose some stranger comes up to you on the street and asks you, the devoted 49ers fan in your throwback Joe Montana jersey, who's better: Aaron Rodgers or Alex Smith?

Almost reflexively you answer Rodgers. I mean, really, you don't even think about it for more than a second.

Rodgers has the better numbers, he's had more immediate success, he's never been called a bust, and he was picked within the top three rounds in your fantasy draft.

Smith, by comparison, has a career 12-21 record, has never finished a season with more touchdown passes than interceptions, and wasn't taken at all in most drafts because he opened the season as San Francisco's backup.

In 33 career starts Smith has never thrown for more than 293 yards in any game. In 25 starts Rodgers has exceeded that figure eight times.

The two men will forever be linked by the 2005 draft when the 49ers, with the first pick, chose Smith out of the University of Utah, over local boy Rodgers, who went to Cal.

Yet while their media-driven rivalry seems on the surface to be as one-sided as that of a hammer and a nail, the debate isn't as cut-and-dried as the numbers suggest.

For one thing, the two men have had to deal with entirely different circumstances.

Smith was thrown, almost immediately, into his team's starting lineup—an offense completely alien to him—and surrounded by players who were undeniably terrible.

Remember, the 49ers didn't have the first overall pick in the 2005 draft by accident. They were a wretched outfit in 2004, with a roster so bereft of talent that they resembled an expansion team.

When Mike Nolan and Scot McCloughan took over the team in 2005, they were faced with a reclamation project every bit as daunting as what coach Jim Schwartz and general manager Martin Mayhew face now with the Detroit Lions.

Their running back was Kevan Barlow. The top receivers were Cedrick Wilson and Brandon Lloyd. The offensive line was a mess and while there were some names on defense (most notably a fading Bryant Young), their leading tacklers were Derek Smith and Jeff Ulbrich.

Not only did Alex Smith have to take his licks while learning then-offensive coordinator Mike McCarthy's version of the West Coast Offense (after masterfully running the spread under Urban Meyer at Utah), but he had to adjust to a whole new offense again the next season when McCarthy got hired as the Packers head coach.

And then a new offense in 2007.

And 2008.

And 2009.

The 49ers go through offensive coordinators the way you or I go through underwear, and for similar reasons.

Smith also hasn't been helped any by having to deal with coaches who are gleefully and pathologically ignorant of the quarterback position.

Nolan not only constricted Smith with his Cheney-level conservative game plans, but nearly ruined his career with his callous negligence, ordering his young quarterback to play with a separated shoulder in 2007.

Only now, after two operations, has Smith regained his arm strength.

The current 49ers regime of coach Mike Singletary and offensive coordinator Jimmy Raye, meanwhile, only lets Smith do what he does best—pass out of the shotgun—when the team is behind.

Anytime the team is winning, their "formula" is to have the quarterback play with two hands tied behind his back and ram the ball pointlessly into nine man fronts to avoid potentially messy turnovers.

Smith has started three-and-a-half games this season and had just one stinker, against Vince Young and the plucky Titans. In his other action he played Peyton Manning to a draw at Indy, was less awful than Jay Cutler against the Bears, and accomplished as much as Matt Schaub at Houston, in half the time.

Smith hasn't been great by any means, but he's trying to get by while breaking in two green receivers in Michael Crabtree and Josh Morgan, and a third one in Isaac Bruce who needed to retire last January.

It is, as they say, "a work in progress."

Contrast what Smith walked into with Rodgers' situation.

Rodgers had three years to sit on the bench and learn at Green Bay.

The offense he got drafted into wasn't all that different than what he ran at Cal under Jeff Tedford.

He's had stability with his coaching staff, and not just with McCarthy. Offensive coordinator Joe Philbin has held that post for three years and quarterbacks coach Tom Clements has been on the job for four.

McCarthy said during his conference call with Bay Area reporters that his experience with Smith shaped his philosophy with young quarterbacks, and that he is a strong proponent of the "sit-and-watch" method.

That sounds well and good when you have Brett Favre on your roster. It's not as though the 49ers pushed Steve Young out the door to make way for the Alex Smith era.

If the only other quarterbacks on Green Bay's roster were Tim Rattay, Ken Dorsey, and Cody Pickett, then Rodgers would've been thrown right into the fire too.

Also, despite the flashy numbers he's put up, Rodgers hasn't been nearly as successful as the analysts make him out to be.

In 2008, his first year at the helm, Rodgers led the Packers to a 6-10 record despite being given virtually the same roster to work with that Favre piloted to a 13-3 mark and an NFC Championship Game appearance the season prior.

He repeatedly folded under the pressure and the Packers lost games by 3, 3, 1, 4, 3, 4, and 3 points.

This season he's already lost the two biggest games on the schedule—against the Vikings—and in the process has made both McCarthy and general manager Ted Thompson look bad in choosing him over Favre.

He's also lost to the previously winless Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

The Packers, preseason darlings to come out of the NFC, are just 5-4 and on the fringe of playoff contention.

While Rodgers has been lauded for his 17-to-5 touchdown-to-interception ratio, he has shown little pocket awareness and taken far more sacks than his beleagured offensive line deserves to be blamed for.

Rodgers' defenders point out that taking a sack is a smarter play then throwing a pick, as Favre often did with the Packers. But the smarter play still would be to throw the ball away, or to a hot receiver, or to see the blitz coming and audible into a better play.

Indeed, Rodgers has been better than Smith thus far in their nascent careers, but the gap isn't as wide as people think, and Rodgers has been given every possible advantage while Smith has had to overcome obstacle after obstacle.

Rodgers couldn't overcome Favre's ghost in the two biggest games of his career, so it wouldn't be surprising at all to see him come up short once more against the other quarterback he'll always be compared to.

This argument hasn't been settled.

Not yet.