Garcia over Smith any day
The NFL playoffs are right around the corner. And out of all the
teams that are still alive in the final push to make the post
season, only one team has a quarterback that has yet to throw an
interception.
Garcia over Smith any day
The NFL playoffs are right around the corner. And out of all the teams that are still alive in the final push to make the post season, only one team has a quarterback that has yet to throw an interception.
That team is the Philadelphia Eagles. That quarterback is Gilroy’s Jeff Garcia.
It makes you feel real good in a sarcastic way that the Niners’ front office let an over-achiever like Garcia go in order to hang on to underachievers Ken Dorsey and Tim Rattay, before signing the biggest bust of all, Alex Smith, to a $50-million deal in 2005.
Given the 49ers current roster, had Garcia been in the huddle this year a record of 10-6 and a trip to the playoffs wouldn’t have been far-fetched. In fact, it probably would have been expected.
Instead, the Niners will probably lose their next three games and finish the season with a record of 5-11. And then next year opt to stick with Smith – a guy who seems to take one step forward and two steps back – again.
I’d take the 36-year-old, 6-foot-1 three-time Pro Bowler any day over the 6-foot-4 overly hyped Smith, who has a canon arm but lacks the intangibles.
All great athletes have the intangibles that really come down to grittiness and a determination to win.
Guys like Larry Bird, Joe Montana, Doug Flutie and Lee Trevino all had it. They may not look or move in a textbook fashion, but they all knew how to win.
Alex Smith just doesn’t have it. But I’m afraid that Mr. Smith will be running the show here for at least another season or two before Nolan admits that he made a huge draft day mistake.
Sadly, the Yorks and Nolan don’t seem to get that today’s NFL is about winning today. Not taking a guy like Smith with the goal of making him a star quarterback in four or five seasons. Teams need to win now. The Niners would have done just that with Garcia. They would have also done it by keeping Rattay or by playing veteran Super Bowl QB Trent Dilfer this season.
With the salary cap and free agents, there just isn’t the time to build and develop a team with the hopes of winning in three to five years. If there was, the 49ers should have had enough smarts to find a way to keep defensive standouts Andre Carter and Julian Peterson.
Guys like Garcia don’t come around often. Guys like Smith are a dime a dozen.
When you think of Garcia you think of toughness, grit and determination. When you think of Smith, you think of an over-rated Prima Donna.
I guess to put it another way, had Garcia had the same physical stature and arm of Alex Smith, Garcia would be comparable to Montana, Young, Elway and Marino. Yet Smith with all of those God-given attributes will probably be out of football in the next three to five years.
It’s clear Smith, the No. 1 draft pick, had it handed to him while Garcia, an undrafted player, has had to constantly prove he is worthy of the title.
And this season the former Gavilan and San Jose State University player is proving himself again. Ever since Donovan McNabb went down a little more than a month ago, Gilroy’s favorite son has made the most of the opportunity, which is probably why it’s appropriate that he now plays in Philadelphia.
I’ve always thought he was a lot like the movie character Rocky Balboa – a good guy who no one thought had a chance, until he was given that chance.
In the four games that he’s played in, Garcia has racked up 805 passing yards and thrown for 8 touchdowns and zero interceptions – good for a quarterback rating of 97.4.
In contrast, in the 13 games this year where Smith has been at the helm of the 49ers huddle, he has thrown 13 touchdowns and 14 interceptions and has a rating of 74 – a rating that would have anyone except the No. 1 pick in the draft warming up the bench. But I guess it’s better than his whopping rating of 40.8 last year.
So now that both Bay Area teams are officially out of the playoff race, we might as well jump on the Eagles’ bandwagon and start rooting for the guy, who played his high school football at Gilroy High.
After all, as long as Philadelphia has guys like Balboa and Garcia on its side, the city and its team could be unstoppable down the stretch.
