Sports still has a little room for romanticism. Even if stories of scandals, trash talk and overzealous figures steal the bright lights of the front pages, you can find stories that would warm you up just as well as a campfire would on a cold night. Although these stories are sometimes too few and too far between, it’s hard not to get caught up in the moment when the triumph of the forgotten individual or downtrodden team catches your attention.
David Carr, Joey Harrington, Patrick Ramsey, Byron Leftwich, Kyle Boller, Rex Grossman, J.P. Losman, Jason Campbell, Vince Young, Matt Leinart, JaMarcus Russell, Brady Quinn. Since 2001, those quarterbacks have all been chosen in the first round of the NFL draft. And all of those QB’s on the list have vastly underachieved in their careers and, for the most part, have been relegated to bouncing around from team to team, trying to get a job that would at least let them wear a backwards baseball hat and hold a clipboard.
This last offseason, Alex Smith could have joined that group. It is no stretch to say that no one would have blamed him for doing so–in fact, his story is so analogous to that of an abused child that many would have argued that he needed the NFL equivalent of Child Protective Services to get him the hell out of San Francisco. Not that many 49ers fans would have minded. Then, along came Jim Harbaugh who played Robin Williams to Alex Smith’s Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting. He saw something in Smith that no one else either could see or wanted to see and, once Smith made it clear that he still wanted to make it work in San Francisco (for some reason), Harbaugh, in turn, made it clear that he wanted Smith back as well. And so began a relationship that defies the laws of logic, sense and modern-day NFL quarterbacking.
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Perhaps it would be too easy to say that the 49ers victory over the Saints was poetic for all the right reasons. In the 49ers first home playoff game in almost a decade, Candlestick Park regained its former glory, as the sea of red in the stands watched familiarly as a quarterback willed the franchise to another signature playoff win. You could have sworn this game took place in the late 80′s or early 90′s. But in 2012, the story was different. It was Vernon Davis, an agile and fast tight-end, who led the team with 180 receiving yards. It was Donte Whitner, not Ronnie Lott, who set the tone on defense by delivering spine-tingling (and concussion-causing) blows to Saints ball-handlers. It was Aldon Smith doing Charles Haley impressions and Justin Smith, like a raging bull, aiming for the matador instead of the red veil. It was Alex Smith with two “game-winning” fourth quarter drives in his first playoff game.
Paragraphs can be written about how the 49ers have overcome every possible hurdle to be 14-3 so far this season and be one game away from the Superbowl, but those paragraphs would miss the point because this is not a story about beating the odds or defying expectations. This is a story about redemption. Not for the defense that could never get stops when it mattered most. Not for their coach who hated living the gigantic shadow that USC draped over the PAC-10. Not for their fans who have had to accept that the old days will never be transposed into the future. But for the quarterback who has every right to lift a giant middle finger to many, many people who watched him deliver one of the most unbelievable finishes in recent NFL memory.
Alex Smith, however, will never raise that middle-finger. Paradoxically, that is why he was much-maligned over his previous 6 years in San Francisco. Mike Singletary and Mike Nolan despised the fact that he seemed as meek and timid as they come. He was berated as being too shy and not capable of being a leader, so much so that his on-field play was a reproduction of the countless doubts and pressures that weighed on his mind. He was robotic, stiff and afraid. That’s precisely why it was so unimaginable that he should be the one on Saturday to help his team overcome the juggernaut Saints and win the game in a fashion in which no one expected the 49ers to win: in a shootout. It required bravado, fearlessness and belief from a quarterback that seemed to be running empty on all 3 categories. He made throws that were easy on the eyes and on the hands of his receivers. He flashed athleticism that everyone thought was gone with the wind, along with the rest of the traits that made him a contender for the #1 pick back in 2005.
Vernon Davis, who had the game of the his life, took time to compare Alex Smith to the kid who everyone used to pick on in grade school. Davis remarked that he could see Smith as the kid who everyone throw rocks at and spit on. Just like almost every other kid who gets shunned in such a way by his peers, Smith was never the type to fight back on the outside. In fact, Smith’s story is the true Revenge of the Nerds, he endured all the crap for six years and now he’s throwing that same crap in the faces of those who constantly tried to buried him in the past few years. That includes me. Several times I found myself wondering how in the world Smith could be fixable and I genuinely believed that he was more fit to be encased in a padded room than in an NFL pocket. I buried him once in 2009, then he came back to life. Then I buried him again last year and now he engineers one of the most masterful fourth quarter playoff performances of all-time. Hyperbole? Perhaps, but remember that, as previously stated, there is some room for romanticism left in sports.
This all is not to say that the story of this years 49ers is one to put a bow around. There are still chapters to be written in this book. But the first chapter is titled “Redemption’s Son” because Alex Smith is where this story started, even if it was seven years ago. And he still holds the pen.
