Whoa, I wouldn't go THAT far. He had 5 crappy years prior to the last 1.5 good years.
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I agree that you can't ignore those crappy 5 years but I also think you have to at least look at the horrid head coaches he had in those 5 years. Coaching can go a long way with players. We saw Cassel play well with a proven OC. But we saw Smith play better then Cassel when he got a good head coach as Cassel never won a playoff game and has never been near the top of QB rating like Smith was this year. I think the coaching that Smith had played a factor in those struggles in the first 5 years.
And you don't think cassel would? Who we would have to give up nothing for and restructure his contract to lower his pay from 7.5 millon to around 3-4 millon? something smith wouldn't do.
Again your selling cassel short. Smith didn't outplay cassel, If you compare their 2010 and 2011 seasons cassel had a better season.. Period. Better QB rating better TD/INT ratio. The ONLY reason cassel didn't win a playoff game is because the TEAM fell apart with the haley weiss fued. It was evident as hell. Play calling changed, Oline went to hell, defense collapsed. Do people not remember that we were a bowe TD drop away from beating the colts, a defensive IMPLOSION from beating the texans aswell and starting the season 7-0. And then you could go further to our defense in our next loss in oakland giving in and letting the raiders win it in OT. And our last game of the season again against oakland after the haley weiss rift went public we got manhandled by oakland in every form of the game going into the playoffs. Now i know we most likely wouldn't have won all 4 of those very games that we should have but even if we only win 2 of the 4 we finished 12-4 and likely have a bye in the playoffs, NONE of which were matt cassel's fault we lost. it wasn't matt cassel that fell apart it was the TEAM and the coaching. which was apparent in the next 2 years following of these team going back to complete garbage.
Oh and as opposed to cassel never was at the tops of the league like alex smith was is also incorrect. He was top 3 in the league for rating all season until the last game against the raiders which dropped him to i believe top 5 in the league, behind brady, flacco, rivers. Ahead of manning, ryan, cutler, freeman, and any other you want to throw in there. Take out the collapse against the raiders in the last game and he probably would have finished second behind brady... Alex smith WAS having a good year and got benched.. Don't think that helps the case with alex smith.
Ok, I started to merge all the Alex Smith Threads, but it didn't work like I intended so I will stop here. It was not my intention to have any of the threads merge with the thread I started being the main thread. My apologies to Seek.