IR

[skinsdad62]

So we lose closer games. Wooopeee

 

[deanpet21]

Facts don’t matter it’s just because , right dean ? Facts are there and what he did on the fields . Not some myth you are peddling

you are bringing up previous games, teams change in the 2nd half of season like our run defense. You don't know if the offense would be stuck in neutral the whole season. We would of had a better chance in scoring points than the three that played for us. You are actually arguing that those three qb could of put up or put more points on the board that Smith. That is just ridiculous. Any Redskins fan who thanks that is just nuts. maybe McCoy could of did it b/c he was our in our offense for a while but once he went down our season was over.

 

[gkekoa]

you are bringing up previous games, teams change in the 2nd half of season like our run defense. You don't know if the offense would be stuck in neutral the whole season. We would of had a better chance in scoring points than the three that played for us. You are actually arguing that those three qb could of put up or put more points on the board that Smith. That is just ridiculous. Any Redskins fan who thanks that is just nuts. maybe McCoy could of did it b/c he was our in our offense for a while but once he went down our season was over.

The season was over when we traded for CDC.

 

[skinsdad62]

you are bringing up previous games, teams change in the 2nd half of season like our run defense. You don't know if the offense would be stuck in neutral the whole season. We would of had a better chance in scoring points than the three that played for us. You are actually arguing that those three qb could of put up or put more points on the board that Smith. That is just ridiculous. Any Redskins fan who thanks that is just nuts. maybe McCoy could of did it b/c he was our in our offense for a while but once he went down our season was over.

His past performance says it all . And the run defense wasn’t better In the 2nd half of the season

 

[Mitziman]

It's really simple. Alex was brought here to WIN football games.

Thru the first 10 games as our QB, he was 6-4. That makes 8 straight WINNING season's in a row as a starting QB in this league, think about dem apples...all other stat stuff is just nonsense, and crying about what some think was lost. Any game you play is about winning. It's really, that simple.

 

[gkekoa]

It's really simple. Alex was brought here to WIN football games.

Thru the first 10 games as our QB, he was 6-4. That makes 8 straight WINNING season's in a row as a starting QB in this league, think about dem apples...all other stat stuff is just nonsense, and crying about what some think was lost. Any game you play is about winning. It's really, that simple.

Yet you claim KC can’t beat winning teams? How many of those wins came against teams with winning records? People like you change your arguments so often, I can’t keep you straight.

Oh...and KC had back to back winning seasons before last season’s injury riddled fiasco...wait...injuries only only count as an excuse for AS led teams...7 win team and AS will be our top payed guy next year too...and the year after.

 

[Mitziman]

Yet you claim KC can’t beat winning teams? How many of those wins came against teams with winning records? People like you change your arguments so often, I can’t keep you straight.

Oh...and KC had back to back winning seasons before last season’s injury riddled fiasco...wait...injuries only only count as an excuse for AS led teams...7 win team and AS will be our top payed guy next year too...and the year after.

Did I “claim” that? Redskins “People” like me, don’t change their arguments to fit their agenda.

You’re one of the crew who always seem to have a BIG “Oh”, and then changes their “argument” when you are on the losing end. And, of course KC would have had “back to back winning seasons” as our QB last year!…IF, HE WOULD HAVE PLAYED WORTH A SHIT IN WEEK 17.

Just ask your buddy. He’s actually on record saying the game KC played against the GMen “didn’t matter”…and, to some degree I can’t argue with that because KC was loooong gone wearing the burgundy and gold well before that game.

I'm not sure Alex will make it back from that awful injury. But, if he does...I'd bet it will be 9 consecutive WINNING seasons as a starting QB in this league.

 

[gkekoa]

Did I “claim” that? Redskins “People” like me, don’t change their arguments to fit their agenda.

You’re one of the crew who always seem to have a BIG “Oh”, and then changes their “argument” when you are on the losing end. And, of course KC would have had “back to back winning seasons” as our QB last year!…IF, HE WOULD HAVE PLAYED WORTH A SHIT IN WEEK 17.

Just ask your buddy. He’s actually on record saying the game KC played against the GMen “didn’t matter”…and, to some degree I can’t argue with that because KC was loooong gone wearing the burgundy and gold well before that game.

I'm not sure Alex will make it back from that awful injury. But, if he does...I'd bet it will be 9 consecutive WINNING seasons as a starting QB in this league.

Care to show me where I changed my opinion?

Actually, we would have been 8-8, which isn’t a winning season. If last season was a winning season, then it would have been three seasons in a row.

Oh...I totally agree week 17 last season didn’t matter.

Except, this wasn’t a winning season. He is by default the starting QB of this team, even if injured. It was his job at the beginning of the season. We traded way too much to get him. I predicted an injury to him.

Back to the argument at hand...why do you discount KC victories to losing teams but credit AS?

 

[Mitziman]

Care to show me where I changed my opinion?

Actually, we would have been 8-8, which isn’t a winning season. If last season was a winning season, then it would have been three seasons in a row.

Oh...I totally agree week 17 last season didn’t matter.

Except, this wasn’t a winning season. He is by default the starting QB of this team, even if injured. It was his job at the beginning of the season. We traded way too much to get him. I predicted an injury to him.

Back to the argument at hand...why do you discount KC victories to losing teams but credit AS?

What is “the argument at hand”? I don’t believe I’ve ever discounted “KC victories to losing teams but credit AS?”

#mitzimanWINNING

#AlexWINNING8inarowandcounting

 

[skinsdad62]

before ASS trade 7-9 after Ass trade ................ same place 3rd place NFC east out of playoffs

screwed up cap , loss of a PB cb , loss of a 3rd round draft pick , lateral transfer

great move by the FO who failed to understand 2x in a row with andy reid , that he knows when guys a done .

i said at age 34 he could increase the risk of injury , it happened

i said he was in decline , he was rated 28th out of 36 qualifiers

i know some people drink that win kool aid but the team failed in 2018

now if you think 20 mil a year is worth a bus driver qb plus the resources we gave up then perhaps you need to learn a little more about value

 

[gkekoa]

What is “the argument at hand”? I don’t believe I’ve ever discounted “KC victories to losing teams but credit AS?”

#mitzimanWINNING

#AlexWINNING8inarowandcounting

If you have never quoted KC’s win/loss record against teams above .500, then I stand corrected. Not many people such as yourself don’t.

Now riddle me this...what is our record after the AS trade?

What do you think our record will be next year?

What do you think our record would have been with Ryan Fitzpatrick, Teddy Bridgewater, or Case Keenum?

 

[skinsdad62]

it would be a shame to trade for smith to come up 8-8 or 9-7 wouldnt it ?
we give up 2 resources to finish the same yet again ? when you could have signed another FA qb who could do that as well ?

71 mil in guaranteed money to finish 500 ? isnt the debate that smith is a WINNER ? i mean damn dont you all have conviction for YOUR guy ?

i buy he will get 10 wins because of a healthy o/line which will make our RBs passable and a stout defense which should jump to at least middle of the pack

we go rid of fuller because i was told he could be replaced easily . dunny and FM appear ready to do so .

so grab your pro smith balls and man up and support your guy . i am he gets 10 wins and a WC . i would expect more if guice were around

my post aug 12 , 2018 from the bragging rights thread ! what happened ?

 

[skinsdad62]

for 3 years i was told a solid starter isnt worth 71 mil guaranteed . just saying

my post aug 13 2018 in bragging rights thread

 

[skinsdad62]

The King of Dinking and Dunking
Smith’s deep-ball proficiency in 2017 is not at all representative of how he has played throughout his career. The fact is that Alex Smith is a dink-and-dunker of the highest order. There is not some false narrative, it’s reality.

Below you can see his rankings from all nine of his qualifying seasons in yards per attempt, air yards per attempt, average depth of target (aDOT) and first down percentage.

Yards Per Attempt: 19th, 24th, 18th, 17th, 29th, 24th, 14th, 16th, 2nd (3 bottom-10 & 1 top-10)

Air Yards Per Attempt (Data since 2009): 26th, 27th, 20th, 35th, 31st, 27th, 28th, 11th (6 bottom-10 & 0 top-10)

aDOT (Data since 2007): 30th, 27th, 31st, 37th, 33rd, 35th, 29th, 26th (8 bottom-10 & 0 top-10)

First-Down Percentage: 26th, 30th, 29th, 19th, 23rd, 10th, 27th, 8th, 11th (4 bottom-10 & 2 top-10)

What’s worse is that many of his bottom-10 rankings also fall in the bottom-5, while only one of those top-10 performances ranked 5th or better (2017 YPA).

But what about Kirk Cousins, you say? Well, he has yet to rank in the bottom-10 in any of the aforementioned categories and has posted at least one top-10 season in all of them. This was, in fact, a false narrative that hung around Cousins for a while. If only the same accusations against Smith were untrue.

Maybe you’re still not sold yet, so let’s turn our attention to Football Outsiders’ ALEX metric (which may or may not be named after Alex Smith) to prove this point once and for all. Here’s a brief explanation of this:

For those new to this metric, it is called Air Less EXpected, or ALEX for short. ALEX measures the average difference between how far a quarterback threw a pass (air yards) and how many yards he needed for a first down. If a quarterback throws a pass to a receiver 4 yards behind the line of scrimmage on third-and-13, then that would be -17 ALEX.

I was only able to find the results from the last three years, so all I can personally tell you is Alex Smith finished 35th, 25th and 21st between 2015 and 2017 among players with at least 224 passing attempts in each of those seasons. Here are few snippets from Football Outsiders’ annual ALEX review articles that should help further illuminate things for you:

ALEX: 2015 Season Review

We do have a new low benchmark with Alex Smith’s minus-3.4 ALEX beating out 2009 Trent Edwards (minus-2.8). Smith and Blaine Gabbert now account for five of the 10 lowest ALEX seasons since 2006. Nine of those 10 seasons have ranked 26th or worse in conversion rate.

ALEX: 2017 Season Review

How about our usual Alex Smith check? He was right behind Taylor at 22nd (+0.7 ALEX), which is his highest finish since 2007. Smith was definitely more aggressive in his first 4,000-yard season, and he had a stellar first half in the playoffs last week. Unfortunately, it led to another second-half collapse, and Smith’s biggest problem was really not pulling the trigger on some third downs. He tried to scramble and just couldn’t make anything happen.

The last part of that quote exemplifies Smith’s playing style. He is a conservative passer who far too often eschews riskier intermediate and deep passes in favor of short conservative throws, scrambles or taking sacks (Smith’s 7.76% career sack rate ranks 6th worst among current starting quarterbacks, Cousins’ 4.81% ranks 5th best).

This isn’t entirely a bad thing, though. It’s why Smith already ranks 19th all-time in rushing yards by a quarterback (2,433) and will likely finish his career in the top-12, if not the top-10. It also probably has a lot to do with his historically low interception rate of 2.1% (7th best all-time and 22nd best when adjusted for era).

In a vacuum, those are great attributes to have, but when those are your quarterback’s best qualities and they are coming at the expense of an explosive/more dynamic passing attack, it just isn’t worth it. The NFL is a passing league and it rewards teams that understand this and use an aggressive approach. You need look no further than last week’s Super Bowl to find proof. As Herman Edwards once told us and Doug Pederson showed last week, you play to win the game.

Unfortunately, history tells us that Smith isn’t likely to improve as he enters his mid-30s.

The King of Dinking and Dunking
Smith’s deep-ball proficiency in 2017 is not at all representative of how he has played throughout his career. The fact is that Alex Smith is a dink-and-dunker of the highest order. There is not some false narrative, it’s reality.

Below you can see his rankings from all nine of his qualifying seasons in yards per attempt, air yards per attempt, average depth of target (aDOT) and first down percentage.

Yards Per Attempt: 19th, 24th, 18th, 17th, 29th, 24th, 14th, 16th, 2nd (3 bottom-10 & 1 top-10)

Air Yards Per Attempt (Data since 2009): 26th, 27th, 20th, 35th, 31st, 27th, 28th, 11th (6 bottom-10 & 0 top-10)

aDOT (Data since 2007): 30th, 27th, 31st, 37th, 33rd, 35th, 29th, 26th (8 bottom-10 & 0 top-10)

First-Down Percentage: 26th, 30th, 29th, 19th, 23rd, 10th, 27th, 8th, 11th (4 bottom-10 & 2 top-10)

What’s worse is that many of his bottom-10 rankings also fall in the bottom-5, while only one of those top-10 performances ranked 5th or better (2017 YPA).

But what about Kirk Cousins, you say? Well, he has yet to rank in the bottom-10 in any of the aforementioned categories and has posted at least one top-10 season in all of them. This was, in fact, a false narrative that hung around Cousins for a while. If only the same accusations against Smith were untrue.

Maybe you’re still not sold yet, so let’s turn our attention to Football Outsiders’ ALEX metric (which may or may not be named after Alex Smith) to prove this point once and for all. Here’s a brief explanation of this:

For those new to this metric, it is called Air Less EXpected, or ALEX for short. ALEX measures the average difference between how far a quarterback threw a pass (air yards) and how many yards he needed for a first down. If a quarterback throws a pass to a receiver 4 yards behind the line of scrimmage on third-and-13, then that would be -17 ALEX.

I was only able to find the results from the last three years, so all I can personally tell you is Alex Smith finished 35th, 25th and 21st between 2015 and 2017 among players with at least 224 passing attempts in each of those seasons. Here are few snippets from Football Outsiders’ annual ALEX review articles that should help further illuminate things for you:

ALEX: 2015 Season Review

We do have a new low benchmark with Alex Smith’s minus-3.4 ALEX beating out 2009 Trent Edwards (minus-2.8). Smith and Blaine Gabbert now account for five of the 10 lowest ALEX seasons since 2006. Nine of those 10 seasons have ranked 26th or worse in conversion rate.

ALEX: 2017 Season Review

How about our usual Alex Smith check? He was right behind Taylor at 22nd (+0.7 ALEX), which is his highest finish since 2007. Smith was definitely more aggressive in his first 4,000-yard season, and he had a stellar first half in the playoffs last week. Unfortunately, it led to another second-half collapse, and Smith’s biggest problem was really not pulling the trigger on some third downs. He tried to scramble and just couldn’t make anything happen.

The last part of that quote exemplifies Smith’s playing style. He is a conservative passer who far too often eschews riskier intermediate and deep passes in favor of short conservative throws, scrambles or taking sacks (Smith’s 7.76% career sack rate ranks 6th worst among current starting quarterbacks, Cousins’ 4.81% ranks 5th best).

This isn’t entirely a bad thing, though. It’s why Smith already ranks 19th all-time in rushing yards by a quarterback (2,433) and will likely finish his career in the top-12, if not the top-10. It also probably has a lot to do with his historically low interception rate of 2.1% (7th best all-time and 22nd best when adjusted for era).

In a vacuum, those are great attributes to have, but when those are your quarterback’s best qualities and they are coming at the expense of an explosive/more dynamic passing attack, it just isn’t worth it. The NFL is a passing league and it rewards teams that understand this and use an aggressive approach. You need look no further than last week’s Super Bowl to find proof. As Herman Edwards once told us and Doug Pederson showed last week, you play to win the game.

Unfortunately, history tells us that Smith isn’t likely to improve as he enters his mid-30s.

Fighting Father Time
empts). Those 30 players combined to produce 62 “above average” seasons per the requirements I just laid out.
Conversely, 75 non-Hall of Fame signal callers between the ages of 30 and 33 were able to hit those numbers and they combined to do so 134 times.
Alex Smith will turn 34-years-old in just under three months from now. Most NFL players are forced to retire long before they hit that age, but things are a bit different for quarterbacks, who often play well into their 30s before they finally hang em’ up. Smith should be able to stick around for a while longer, but that’s not the problem; the issue is how effective he will be.

I used Pro Football Reference’s similarity scores and some statically similar players of my own choosing to come up with a set of historical comps for Alex Smith. This list included some very solid QBs like Mark Brunell, Phil Simms, Chad Pennington, Jim Harbaugh, Doug Williams, Matt Hasselbeck and Joe Theismann (yes, there happened to be a lot of former Redskins in there).

Every player I looked at played into their 30s, but the vast majority of them either retired, hardly played or were ineffective by right around the time they hit Alex Smith’s current age. Maybe you don’t like my comps though or you don’t trust a process that isn’t as exhaustive and transparent as the one I just presented. I can understand that, but, at the very least, consider these next facts.

Only 30 non-Hall of Fame QBs (likely HOFers were also excluded) have had a season with above-average passer rating and ANY/A numbers (per PFR’s era-adjusted index metrics) after their age 33-seasons (minimum 200 att
These “above-average seasons” have basically occurred more than twice as frequently for quarterbacks between the ages of 30 and 33 than they have for players that are 34 or older. Kirk Cousins doesn’t turn 30 until a month before the 2018 seasons begins, Alex Smith turns 34 in three months. Alex Smith will be 38-years-old by the time Kirk Cousins turns as old as Smith is today, which also happens to be when Smith’s current contract expires.

The Verdict
If you’ve read everything up until this point, I’m not really sure how you could debate that Alex Smith is a better quarterback than Kirk Cousins. Cousins is clearly the better player in almost every regard, and it’s not particularly close.

The gap will likely only widen as Smith progresses into his mid-30s and is forced to depend on what will likely be a far inferior supporting cast compared to what he’s grown accustomed to

except the puppets who slurp the allen jizz


this was written feb 10 2018 . it all happened . age caught up with him for health and his ranking was 28th overall

 

[skinsdad62]

look my posts have addressed every talking point used to say this is a good trade . it isnt . right now on paper we took a step back on pass offense , pass defense , and draft capitol . we got older at qb and for lesser performance .

now if they can show me data that obliterates my position backed up by real data above i will listen

What I find oddly interesting in all this is

Andy Reid made the conscious decision at the beginning of 2017 to begin the process of moving away from Alex Smith. Likely because he knew this guy had reached his ceiling (sound familiar?) .

Yet now we are supposed to be all excited that a 34 year old who has reached his limits is some how the answer to the Redskins

Remaining middle of the pack.

both of these posts come from february , all came true

 

[Breed]

another falsehood , he passed for over 5000 yds and 30 tds vs teams with winning records

WTF are you talking about?

And lest we forget that when the team went to the playoffs in 2015 (?) the team won 4 straight elimination games to make the playoffs all big games or else we went home

We didn't beat a single team in 2015 with a winning record. Not one. As for those 4 games, none of which were elimination games cuz as shitty as we were in 2015. The rest of the division was even worse. We beat a shitty 5-8 Chicago team. A shitty 6-8 Buffalo team. A shitty 6-9 Philly team and a shitty 4-11 Dallas team. We had to wait till fucking game 14 before we could say we won 2 games in a row that year.

The following year. we beat 2 teams with winning records. The Giants who were 2-0 when we beat them in week 3 and they finished the year at 11-5. The Packers were 4-6 after we beat them on Sun night and finished the year at 10-6. I thought that game was a signature win for us. Turns out, it wasn't really shit. While it left us sitting pretty decent at 6-3-1 at the time. We made sure to fuck that up by going 2-4

And KC was far from perfect. He left plays on the field that were there and should've been made against Minny, Arizona, and Dallas off the top of my head. And from what I've seen of Kirk this year. He's gotten a lot better at throwing end zone fade routes than when he was a Redskin. He was also utterly awful against inside pressure, just horrid. This is another area in which he's improved quite a bit it seems. That said....his fault, someone else's fault, no one's fault. He can still throw a killer pick 6 with the best of them.

And with that said. Kirk was significantly better than Alex Smith. Smith it seemed was regressing, not improving when he was injured. Personally I think he's a fuckin scrub, but dean's free to think the Skins were Super Bowl worthy with Smith as QB. Just as dad is free to think the Skins would be whatever he thinks they would be with Kirk.

we almost beat the eagles with Sanchez. lol. if we get the pi call in the Texans game that would of been 2 wins right there. du the injuries are why we are going to be 7-9. The team was built to win this year.

We did not almost beat the Eagles with Sanchez at QB. How the fuck can you even think that? Its shit like this that makes me think you're a bot, comrade.

 

[Sportster 72]

Dallas game was won by the sack/fumble by Kerrigan with Smith picking up the fumble and getting the TD. Pretty sure Smith was on the sideline for that.

 

[gkekoa]

The King of Dinking and Dunking
Smith’s deep-ball proficiency in 2017 is not at all representative of how he has played throughout his career. The fact is that Alex Smith is a dink-and-dunker of the highest order. There is not some false narrative, it’s reality.

Below you can see his rankings from all nine of his qualifying seasons in yards per attempt, air yards per attempt, average depth of target (aDOT) and first down percentage.

Yards Per Attempt: 19th, 24th, 18th, 17th, 29th, 24th, 14th, 16th, 2nd (3 bottom-10 & 1 top-10)

Air Yards Per Attempt (Data since 2009): 26th, 27th, 20th, 35th, 31st, 27th, 28th, 11th (6 bottom-10 & 0 top-10)

aDOT (Data since 2007): 30th, 27th, 31st, 37th, 33rd, 35th, 29th, 26th (8 bottom-10 & 0 top-10)

First-Down Percentage: 26th, 30th, 29th, 19th, 23rd, 10th, 27th, 8th, 11th (4 bottom-10 & 2 top-10)

What’s worse is that many of his bottom-10 rankings also fall in the bottom-5, while only one of those top-10 performances ranked 5th or better (2017 YPA).

But what about Kirk Cousins, you say? Well, he has yet to rank in the bottom-10 in any of the aforementioned categories and has posted at least one top-10 season in all of them. This was, in fact, a false narrative that hung around Cousins for a while. If only the same accusations against Smith were untrue.

Maybe you’re still not sold yet, so let’s turn our attention to Football Outsiders’ ALEX metric (which may or may not be named after Alex Smith) to prove this point once and for all. Here’s a brief explanation of this:

For those new to this metric, it is called Air Less EXpected, or ALEX for short. ALEX measures the average difference between how far a quarterback threw a pass (air yards) and how many yards he needed for a first down. If a quarterback throws a pass to a receiver 4 yards behind the line of scrimmage on third-and-13, then that would be -17 ALEX.

I was only able to find the results from the last three years, so all I can personally tell you is Alex Smith finished 35th, 25th and 21st between 2015 and 2017 among players with at least 224 passing attempts in each of those seasons. Here are few snippets from Football Outsiders’ annual ALEX review articles that should help further illuminate things for you:

ALEX: 2015 Season Review

We do have a new low benchmark with Alex Smith’s minus-3.4 ALEX beating out 2009 Trent Edwards (minus-2.8). Smith and Blaine Gabbert now account for five of the 10 lowest ALEX seasons since 2006. Nine of those 10 seasons have ranked 26th or worse in conversion rate.

ALEX: 2017 Season Review

How about our usual Alex Smith check? He was right behind Taylor at 22nd (+0.7 ALEX), which is his highest finish since 2007. Smith was definitely more aggressive in his first 4,000-yard season, and he had a stellar first half in the playoffs last week. Unfortunately, it led to another second-half collapse, and Smith’s biggest problem was really not pulling the trigger on some third downs. He tried to scramble and just couldn’t make anything happen.

The last part of that quote exemplifies Smith’s playing style. He is a conservative passer who far too often eschews riskier intermediate and deep passes in favor of short conservative throws, scrambles or taking sacks (Smith’s 7.76% career sack rate ranks 6th worst among current starting quarterbacks, Cousins’ 4.81% ranks 5th best).

This isn’t entirely a bad thing, though. It’s why Smith already ranks 19th all-time in rushing yards by a quarterback (2,433) and will likely finish his career in the top-12, if not the top-10. It also probably has a lot to do with his historically low interception rate of 2.1% (7th best all-time and 22nd best when adjusted for era).

In a vacuum, those are great attributes to have, but when those are your quarterback’s best qualities and they are coming at the expense of an explosive/more dynamic passing attack, it just isn’t worth it. The NFL is a passing league and it rewards teams that understand this and use an aggressive approach. You need look no further than last week’s Super Bowl to find proof. As Herman Edwards once told us and Doug Pederson showed last week, you play to win the game.

Unfortunately, history tells us that Smith isn’t likely to improve as he enters his mid-30s.

The King of Dinking and Dunking
Smith’s deep-ball proficiency in 2017 is not at all representative of how he has played throughout his career. The fact is that Alex Smith is a dink-and-dunker of the highest order. There is not some false narrative, it’s reality.

Below you can see his rankings from all nine of his qualifying seasons in yards per attempt, air yards per attempt, average depth of target (aDOT) and first down percentage.

Yards Per Attempt: 19th, 24th, 18th, 17th, 29th, 24th, 14th, 16th, 2nd (3 bottom-10 & 1 top-10)

Air Yards Per Attempt (Data since 2009): 26th, 27th, 20th, 35th, 31st, 27th, 28th, 11th (6 bottom-10 & 0 top-10)

aDOT (Data since 2007): 30th, 27th, 31st, 37th, 33rd, 35th, 29th, 26th (8 bottom-10 & 0 top-10)

First-Down Percentage: 26th, 30th, 29th, 19th, 23rd, 10th, 27th, 8th, 11th (4 bottom-10 & 2 top-10)

What’s worse is that many of his bottom-10 rankings also fall in the bottom-5, while only one of those top-10 performances ranked 5th or better (2017 YPA).

But what about Kirk Cousins, you say? Well, he has yet to rank in the bottom-10 in any of the aforementioned categories and has posted at least one top-10 season in all of them. This was, in fact, a false narrative that hung around Cousins for a while. If only the same accusations against Smith were untrue.

Maybe you’re still not sold yet, so let’s turn our attention to Football Outsiders’ ALEX metric (which may or may not be named after Alex Smith) to prove this point once and for all. Here’s a brief explanation of this:

For those new to this metric, it is called Air Less EXpected, or ALEX for short. ALEX measures the average difference between how far a quarterback threw a pass (air yards) and how many yards he needed for a first down. If a quarterback throws a pass to a receiver 4 yards behind the line of scrimmage on third-and-13, then that would be -17 ALEX.

I was only able to find the results from the last three years, so all I can personally tell you is Alex Smith finished 35th, 25th and 21st between 2015 and 2017 among players with at least 224 passing attempts in each of those seasons. Here are few snippets from Football Outsiders’ annual ALEX review articles that should help further illuminate things for you:

ALEX: 2015 Season Review

We do have a new low benchmark with Alex Smith’s minus-3.4 ALEX beating out 2009 Trent Edwards (minus-2.8). Smith and Blaine Gabbert now account for five of the 10 lowest ALEX seasons since 2006. Nine of those 10 seasons have ranked 26th or worse in conversion rate.

ALEX: 2017 Season Review

How about our usual Alex Smith check? He was right behind Taylor at 22nd (+0.7 ALEX), which is his highest finish since 2007. Smith was definitely more aggressive in his first 4,000-yard season, and he had a stellar first half in the playoffs last week. Unfortunately, it led to another second-half collapse, and Smith’s biggest problem was really not pulling the trigger on some third downs. He tried to scramble and just couldn’t make anything happen.

The last part of that quote exemplifies Smith’s playing style. He is a conservative passer who far too often eschews riskier intermediate and deep passes in favor of short conservative throws, scrambles or taking sacks (Smith’s 7.76% career sack rate ranks 6th worst among current starting quarterbacks, Cousins’ 4.81% ranks 5th best).

This isn’t entirely a bad thing, though. It’s why Smith already ranks 19th all-time in rushing yards by a quarterback (2,433) and will likely finish his career in the top-12, if not the top-10. It also probably has a lot to do with his historically low interception rate of 2.1% (7th best all-time and 22nd best when adjusted for era).

In a vacuum, those are great attributes to have, but when those are your quarterback’s best qualities and they are coming at the expense of an explosive/more dynamic passing attack, it just isn’t worth it. The NFL is a passing league and it rewards teams that understand this and use an aggressive approach. You need look no further than last week’s Super Bowl to find proof. As Herman Edwards once told us and Doug Pederson showed last week, you play to win the game.

Unfortunately, history tells us that Smith isn’t likely to improve as he enters his mid-30s.

Fighting Father Time
empts). Those 30 players combined to produce 62 “above average” seasons per the requirements I just laid out.
Conversely, 75 non-Hall of Fame signal callers between the ages of 30 and 33 were able to hit those numbers and they combined to do so 134 times.
Alex Smith will turn 34-years-old in just under three months from now. Most NFL players are forced to retire long before they hit that age, but things are a bit different for quarterbacks, who often play well into their 30s before they finally hang em’ up. Smith should be able to stick around for a while longer, but that’s not the problem; the issue is how effective he will be.

I used Pro Football Reference’s similarity scores and some statically similar players of my own choosing to come up with a set of historical comps for Alex Smith. This list included some very solid QBs like Mark Brunell, Phil Simms, Chad Pennington, Jim Harbaugh, Doug Williams, Matt Hasselbeck and Joe Theismann (yes, there happened to be a lot of former Redskins in there).

Every player I looked at played into their 30s, but the vast majority of them either retired, hardly played or were ineffective by right around the time they hit Alex Smith’s current age. Maybe you don’t like my comps though or you don’t trust a process that isn’t as exhaustive and transparent as the one I just presented. I can understand that, but, at the very least, consider these next facts.

Only 30 non-Hall of Fame QBs (likely HOFers were also excluded) have had a season with above-average passer rating and ANY/A numbers (per PFR’s era-adjusted index metrics) after their age 33-seasons (minimum 200 att
These “above-average seasons” have basically occurred more than twice as frequently for quarterbacks between the ages of 30 and 33 than they have for players that are 34 or older. Kirk Cousins doesn’t turn 30 until a month before the 2018 seasons begins, Alex Smith turns 34 in three months. Alex Smith will be 38-years-old by the time Kirk Cousins turns as old as Smith is today, which also happens to be when Smith’s current contract expires.

The Verdict
If you’ve read everything up until this point, I’m not really sure how you could debate that Alex Smith is a better quarterback than Kirk Cousins. Cousins is clearly the better player in almost every regard, and it’s not particularly close.

The gap will likely only widen as Smith progresses into his mid-30s and is forced to depend on what will likely be a far inferior supporting cast compared to what he’s grown accustomed to

except the puppets who slurp the allen jizz


this was written feb 10 2018 . it all happened . age caught up with him for health and his ranking was 28th overall

So he is a coward? I think I called him that before.

 

[deanpet21]

WTF are you talking about?



We didn't beat a single team in 2015 with a winning record. Not one. As for those 4 games, none of which were elimination games cuz as shitty as we were in 2015. The rest of the division was even worse. We beat a shitty 5-8 Chicago team. A shitty 6-8 Buffalo team. A shitty 6-9 Philly team and a shitty 4-11 Dallas team. We had to wait till fucking game 14 before we could say we won 2 games in a row that year.

The following year. we beat 2 teams with winning records. The Giants who were 2-0 when we beat them in week 3 and they finished the year at 11-5. The Packers were 4-6 after we beat them on Sun night and finished the year at 10-6. I thought that game was a signature win for us. Turns out, it wasn't really shit. While it left us sitting pretty decent at 6-3-1 at the time. We made sure to fuck that up by going 2-4

And KC was far from perfect. He left plays on the field that were there and should've been made against Minny, Arizona, and Dallas off the top of my head. And from what I've seen of Kirk this year. He's gotten a lot better at throwing end zone fade routes than when he was a Redskin. He was also utterly awful against inside pressure, just horrid. This is another area in which he's improved quite a bit it seems. That said....his fault, someone else's fault, no one's fault. He can still throw a killer pick 6 with the best of them.

And with that said. Kirk was significantly better than Alex Smith. Smith it seemed was regressing, not improving when he was injured. Personally I think he's a fuckin scrub, but dean's free to think the Skins were Super Bowl worthy with Smith as QB. Just as dad is free to think the Skins would be whatever he thinks they would be with Kirk.



We did not almost beat the Eagles with Sanchez at QB. How the fuck can you even think that? Its shit like this that makes me think you're a bot, comrade.

we had the lead, of course we weren't going to beat them but with Smith we probably could. That is what I was saying to skinsdad. Im saying with Smith we had a better chance to win.

 

[skinsdad62]

we had the lead, of course we weren't going to beat them but with Smith we probably could. That is what I was saying to skinsdad. Im saying with Smith we had a better chance to win.

nope his play this year strongly indicates he would have done no such thing . the defense collapsed vs eagles , cowboys and giants , and CDC proved VS the colts , texans , saints and falcons he could not bring this team back from a deficit nor even compete in a shoot out type game

that is proven , on the field , not some mythical , made up , place in your head