Alex Smith's Career Reclamation Continues with San Francisco 49ers

The Detroit Lions? So Week 4. The Buffalo Bills? No longer the flavor of the day.

The San Francisco 49ers are definitely the surprise team of the NFL in 2011. But even as the 49ers piled up win after win during a 7-1 start, a lot of people were dismissive of what was happening by the Bay.

A lot of that was perceptual. Much as a one-eyed man is king of the blind, so too does a halfway decent football team become the undisputed king of the woeful NFC West.

But just one of San Francisco's wins so far is against a divisional opponent, a Week 1 victory over the Seattle Seahawks. That's important to note because now that the 49ers beat the New York Giants on Sunday to improve to 8-1, five of their final seven games will be against those much-maligned divisional opponents.

That has to be good for San Francisco given the Seahawks, Arizona Cardinals and St. Louis Rams are still just a combined 8-19 even after all three teams won on Sunday.

The 49ers, who have now won seven straight, are combining terrific defense with a mental toughness under first-year head coach Jim Harbaugh that was absent in the franchise's decade of futility under coaches Dennis Erickson, Mike Nolan and Mike Singletary.

There were a lot of heroes in Sunday's 27-20 win over the Giants.

Justin Smith knocked down Eli Manning's fourth-down pass attempt with 34 seconds left to seal the win. Carlos Rogers, the cornerback who escaped from Washington after the lockout, had two interceptions. Rookie running back Kendall Hunter had a key 17-yard touchdown run in place of injured Frank Gore and finished with 40 yards on six carries on a day when Gore fell 100 yards short of his sixth straight 100-yard game.

But the guy at the forefront of it all is a quarterback whose career has been written off as a bust for quite awhile now.

We all know the history. In the 2005 NFL Draft, there were two quarterbacks perceived to be competing to be taken No. 1 overall by San Francisco, Utah's Alex Smith and California's Aaron Rodgers.

The 49ers went for Smith. Rodgers plummeted down the draft board before finally going at No. 25 to the Green Bay Packers.

While Rodgers sat behind Brett Favre in Green Bay, Smith struggled mightily with the 49ers. Smith started 30 games in his first three seasons in San Francisco. The team was 11-19 in those games and Smith threw 31 interceptions to just 19 touchdowns and had a quarterback rating of 63.5.

When Rodgers took over the starting job with the Packers in 2008, Smith missed the entire season after shoulder surgery and he's had to battle his way past Shaun Hill, T.J. O'Sullivan and Troy Smith to get back to the top of the depth chart.

No one would say Smith is a better quarterback than Rodgers, but that's not the point. Smith is no longer the liability we've all perceived him to be.

With Gore hemmed in by the Giant defense, the 49ers put the game in Smith's hands and he delivered. Smith was 19-for-30 on Sunday for 242 yards and a touchdown. The interception he threw could hardly be called Smith's fault; a well-thrown ball caromed off the helmet of wide receiver Ted Ginn Jr. into the hands of a New York defender.

When Harbaugh opted to re-sign Smith after the lockout, the decision was ridiculed and it was assumed Smith was coming back to keep the seat warm for second-round draft pick Colin Kaepernick.

But now?

Smith is completing 64 percent of his passes and has a quarterback rating of 95.8, with 11 touchdowns and just three picks. His team is 8-1 and could clinch their first division title since 2002 by the end of November.

Is he Aaron Rodgers?

No. But for the first time since that 2005 draft, Alex Smith is holding his own as a legitimate NFL starting quarterback for a legitimate contender.

That's more than a lot of us ever expected.