I consider myself a fan of Mr. Cohn. I wouldn't presume to say we're friends, but I've worked alongside him numerous times and I get along very well with his son Grant. Lowell calls me "Dookie" (short for "Duke of Earl" as in Erler.) As with any columnist, I don't always agree with Lowell, and I found myself not just disagreeing but agitated to the point of not being able to sleep for a bit about a blog post he wrote last Saturday in the wake of the 49ers-Raiders preseason game that we both covered.
Here it is, in its entirety:
SAN FRANCISCO — You know a good quarterback when you see one. Alex Smith doesn’t have the look — not yet. Will he ever?
He did some nice things against Oakland on Saturday night. I would be a real stick in the mud if I didn’t say that.
On the 49ers’ first drive, Smith hit Vernon Davis as he was supposed to with a nifty pass to the right and Davis caught the ball as he was supposed to and ended up with a 14-yard gain. It was all very professional.
Later on, Smith connected with Joshua Morgan for 32 yards and after that he hit Braylon Edwards near the sideline for a 32-yard gain, Edwards snagging the ball with one hand and clutching it into his body.
You looked at Smith doing that and you thought, “He’s not so bad after all. And why is everybody giving this nice man a rough time?”
There was one problem, though. With Smith there’s always one problem or sometimes more than one. Mixed in with all those good things Smith did a not-so-good thing.
He took the ball in the shotgun formation and stared at Davis. He stared at Davis a long time. The coaches have told him not to stare at one receiver, but gee whiz, he just can’t help himself. If the play was a cartoon, a big black arrow would have pointed at Davis’ helmet and the words INTENDED RECEIVER would have floated above Davis’ head to let everyone know Smith was going his way.
Maybe the Raiders saw the arrow — in this case an invisible arrow. They most definitely saw Smith’s eyes beaming in Davis’ direction. Raiders’ defensive end Matt Shaughnessy eyeballed Smith eyeballing Davis — call it the Double Eyeball Maneuver. Shaughnessy stepped in front of Davis and snagged the pass. That goes into the record book as an interception or, if you prefer to be colloquial, call it a pick.
As you can imagine, there was considerable discussion of the pick postgame. Smith, the most honest man alive, said, “I didn’t see the guy.” That sure would explain the play. Smith should have realized Shaughnessy, a defensive end, was dropping back in coverage. That’s what he said, and he will do that next time. And he meant it.
Harbaugh, who may or may not have a way with words, explained the play this way: “We talked about it. We feel it’s a correctable thing. I know what happened. We have to do a better job with our eyes.”
It’s that last sentence that stays with you, the phrase “our eyes.” It’s like Harbaugh and Smith share one pair of eyes. “Coach, can I borrow the eyes tonight?” Or maybe Harbaugh has the better set of peepers when it comes to seeing the field and wishes he could pop his eyes into Smith’s head on football Sunday.
The whole eyes thing and the pick make you wonder about Smith. He is a mixture of good and bad, always has been. In life that’s an OK mixture. How often have you heard wise people say, “No one’s all good or all bad. People are a mixture.”
But football is more demanding than life. As unfair as this seems, football doesn’t tolerate a mixture. It requires quarterbacks to be good all the time. It’s not like a quarterback — say, Smith — can throw a few good passes and then he gets the license to really stink out the joint and throw a brain-numbing, drive-murdering pick.
Even though Smith did good stuff when he did the good stuff, his passer rating was 61.7 for the mostly two quarters he played. A quarterback rating of 61.7 is considered low, although not as low as the turf inhabited by an earthworm or a mole. In school, a grade of 61.7 is a “D-minus,“ and that isn’t so hot. By contrast, Raiders’ starting quarterback Jason Campbell had a quarterback rating of 105.7 until Ahmad Brooks knocked him out of the game.
This is not to say Campbell is a superior performer to Smith — well, actually it is to say Campbell is a superior performer to Smith.
You may think I’m mean. You may think I’m being hard on Smith, not encouraging him for doing well some of the time in an exhibition game. You may think I owed him an atta boy. It doesn’t work that way. The burden of proof is on Smith — now, finally, and forever.
There are three main problems I have with this column.
First of all, after checking the TV replay multiple times, I strongly dispute the notion that Smith stared at Davis the whole way. If anything, he threw the pick because he didn't stare at him enough. If you look at this clip, particularly the second half of it with the end zone view, you'll clearly see that Smith kept his eyes down the middle of the field to look off the safeties. Only at the last instant did he look at Davis before releasing the ball, assuming with the safeties out of the play that Davis would be all alone. If he stared at him the whole way, as Cohn suggests, he would've seen the ultra-rare sight of a defensive end, in this case Matt Shaughnessy, dropping 15 yards down the field and toward the sidelines to take the out route away. Was it a poor read from Smith? Absolutely. But suggesting that Smith made the rookie mistake of staring down a receiver the whole way is at best lazy writing and at worst agenda-driven writing, a case of seeing what you want to see instead of what actually transpired.
Secondly, Cohn brings up Smith's final rating - 61.7 - to draw his "D-" conclusion. It's cute, but again either thoughtless or willfully misleading. Smith had all of 13 pass attempts and three of his five incompletions were flat out drops of passes he put right on the receivers' hands.
Thirdly and most important of all, Cohn ignores the fact that Smith had virtually no chance to boost his stats with touchdown passes because of the six goal-to-go plays the team ran on their first and third drives, Jim Harbaugh, cognizant of not wanting to reveal any of his good plays in the preseason, called simple runs up the gut. The one pass attempt Smith had, it was a play-action with one receiver option, Joshua Morgan. Smith felt Morgan was covered, so he threw the ball away.
Now, lord knows Smith has deserved plenty of criticism for his play over the years. But I think we can agree that one of his strengths has been as a red zone passer. He's very effective there. He either throws touchdowns or the team kicks field goals. He doesn't turn the ball over in those situations. He led the league in passer rating last season -- something like 118, I think -- and had nine touchdowns and no picks in red zone situations. I'm gonna give him the benefit of the doubt and say he might have produced at least one touchdown there in a normal circumstance if given the opportunity.
Cohn punishes Smith in his column without ever clarifying that he had but one goal-to-go pass attempt and never explains how a different non-Smith quarterback could've produced multiple touchdowns on drives one and three where Smith did not. He all but blames the botched up field goal on Smith.
In my opinion, there are two main facets of quarterback play: Making the right decision and making an accurate throw. I contend that on Smith's 13 attempts he executed 25 out of 26 possible times. He made the right decision 12 of 13 plays, with the only obvious exception being the interception, and he made an accurate throw all 13 of his plays. Even on the pick, if Shaughnessy wasn't there, the ball was on a direct trajectory to Davis. It was a bad decision, but not an inaccurate pass.
I gave Smith a "B" for the game, knocking him down a full letter grade for the interception. Otherwise it was very hard to find any fault with him. He read the Raiders defense, he stood tall against their blitzes, and he made the right decision and the accurate throw time and again. To me, that's progress, as much as we can assign progress to a preaseason game against the Raiders. I don't blame him for not putting more points on the board because his hands were tied by the coach (and wisely so, considering the circumstance).
I suspect Cohn in his heart of hearts probably thinks Smith had a "B" game as well. However he is a columnist, and the job of the columnist is to be interesting and provocative. If you want an honest assessment of how so-and-so played, look to the beat writers, whose jobs are to be objective. Columnists look for angles, even ones they don't necessarily believe.
I think Cohn didn't write that Smith had a "B" game because he doesn't think that is interesting enough to warrant a column. It wouldn't have gotten as much reader reaction, positive or negative, as writing that he stunk.
Well you know what? People have written "Alex Smith stinks" columns since 2005. No one in their right mind has any expectations of him. Everyone assumes he'll always stink. So to my way of thinking, writing "Alex Smith stunk" IS the boring column.
You want to be original? You want to be provocative? Explain to your writers that while you saw good things A, B, and C, that it doesn't mean squat because you still saw X, Y, and Z. That as long as X, Y, and Z exist Smith will always let people down. Make it clear that while Smith played well in this game, you still think he'll be poor when it matters. At least then you're stating a critical opinion, which is your aim, but still being honest about the game you watched in the context of its own vacuum.
Otherwise, why even go to the game? Seriously, Cohn could've written this column by looking at the box score, and if I didn't personally see him in the press box, I would've assumed that's just what he did.
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Apropos of Nothing
Only two weeks in and I already feel the EPL is over. Goddamn Man United is gonna win it again. They just toyed with Tottenham on Monday. It was 3-0 but could've been 6-0. They're just too good.
I mean, they decimated a decent Spurs side with Javier Hernandez, Dimitar Berbatov, Ryan Giggs, Park Ji-Sung, Rio Ferdinand and Michael Carrick all out of the starting 11. All six of those guys probably could've started for the Spurs and if not, then at least for most of the other teams in the league.
What hope does anyone else have? Liverpool won at Arsenal, but they're not very deep. The Gunners are selling off their guys left and right -- ownership problems Ratto tells me. Chelsea are supposedly close to getting Luka Modric from the Spurs in last gasp hope that he'll be able to get Fernando Torres goals when all others have tried and failed. Manchester City? Yeah, right.
I don't know what bothers me more, that it already seems like a foregone conclusion that the Red Devils will win again or that in spite of myself I found myself in awe of their quality and style while watching the game on Monday. Heaven help me they really played beautiful, attractive football. How am I suppose to hate them if they keep doing that?
I'm sure Alex Ferguson will think of something.
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Tonight's song on my I-Pod that is typically enjoyed by a 13-year-old girl:
"Give the Jew Girl Toys" by Sarah Silverman.
"What does Jesus have to do with you?/You've got as much to do with Jesus as you do with Scooby Doo."
Alright, enough for the first day. Time for bed, as I haven't slept for 36 hours because of magazine duties. I'll write something more Niners specific tomorrow.
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