Originally Posted by
ctchiefsfan
texaschief....I think you are being just a little harsh.
Alex Smith showed us he was a pretty decent quaterback last year. He even showed some flashes of brilliance. And without a doubt he showed a great personal drive to "just get the damned job done".
He did look less-than-impressive the first half of the season. But, a certain amount of that should be written off to new team, new scheme, new coach. But he looked a lot better as an individual player the last half of the season.
I'm not at all sure however that last season earned him a long term $15 or so million per year contract with a lot of it guaranteed.
I can easily see him being worth a 5 year $70 million contract extension with say $15-$18 million guaranteed. Not what I would like to see us pay him, but I could live with it. That would really only commit us to him for 2014 and 2015 and if done right might free up a little cap space this year. But I doubt his "condom agent" would do that. In today's NFL, it's all about guaranteed money.
Alternatively, I'm happy to see him play out 2014 and depending on his performance either let him go in free agency (compensatory picks, a troubled team would probably grab him so the picks for the 2015 season would probably be good) or maybe sign a lower deal based on what looks like a rough schedule this year. If we went 7-9 or 8-8 in 2014 for that should certainly lower the demands.
I'd like to see us keep Alex Smith....unless Reid honestly thinks that in Bray or Chase Daniel we have some sort of "secret nuclear weapon" that only needs one more year of development.
In short, I figure that I have to trust Reid on this issue.
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