49ers Draft Alex Smith QB first in draft

As much as Aaron Rodgers would have been a great sentimental pick, I can understand the reasons why they went with Alex Smith. First, impressively, he has already graduated with a degree in Economics with a 3.75 GPA at age 20. The vast majority of players are barely motivated to get their degree period but he not only has gotten his degree but did it on an accelerated pace even with all the extracurricular activities that college football requires of the players, whether it be practices or games or preparing for games. And yet he did it in just two years.

Second, I don't know this for certain, but I've been hearing that Alex Smith is more athletic and more of physical pressence than Aaron Rodgers. The NFL has been moving in that direction for many years now for QBs so that makes sense as well. With the huge linemen bearing down on QBs, the QB has to have some size or get clobbered by the behemoths that line up as defensive ends today.

Third, as much as they doth protest, the Niners are not really a West Coast offense team. For all the talk about the new offensive coordinator's learning at the feet of Joe Montana when they were together at K.C., hello!, the most well-known practioner of that offense, Bill Walsh, just lives down the street, apparently available to talk to anyone who wants to talk football offense, and the Niners have not snapped him up to act as a consultant to the team (which would have costed them much less than it did for the Niners to tell Dennis Erickson good-bye). So it is not entirely good that Aaron Rodgers is probably the best quarterback in college running a West Coast offense, as the Niners don't really run one else they would have embraced Bill Walsh as contributor emeritus to the Niners when the new regime took over.

Intelligent, strong physically, winner (21-1 in his two years as a starter, including 12-0 last season), leader, he was accurate as well as wily as he rushed for many yards and TDs as well. As a Cal grad, I would have loved the storybook tale of drafting Aaron Rodgers, a Cal product himself, a local boy who was a big 49er's fan, but I guess it was not to be.

I have no idea myself which player will be better, I go by what I read and process. I think Aaron probably ended up in a better situation, going to Green Bay, one of the truer practioners of the West Coast offense, learning from one of the great QBs in history in Brett Favre. He may have lost $10M in the process of falling from 1st to 24th, but he should make all that back and more if he can become the next great Green Bay QB, whereas I don't know what would have happened if he went to the Niners since their West Coast offense is not as pure as Green Bay's version (and even that is not as pure as the Bill Walsh's) and the situation is so much more chaotic and up in the air. It should certainly be a smoother ride in Green Bay than here.