Alex Smith has been a miracle for Washington. He could be the team’s future, too.
Winning for this team is still as close as an impulsive rookie mistake by Chase Young and as far as the 59 yards that Detroit kicker Matt Prater’s game-winning field goal had to travel in Ford Field’s dull indoor light. The Lions’ last-second 30-27 victory doesn’t tell the amazing story of the 36-year-old quarterback who brought Washington back to what should have been overtime after trailing 24-3 in the second half.
This season was never supposed to be about him. The fact he made it to this past summer’s training camp brought a necessary lift to a dreary year, but aside from the smiles and the pats on the back, all those drills he ran in practice weren’t really about starting in the team’s ninth game. Now it’s hard to imagine Washington figuring out how to win without him.
“There’s a certain confidence,” Washington Coach Ron Rivera said Sunday as he talked about Smith, who finished the game with 390 yards on 38-for-55 passing, in a postgame video news conference.
Who knows where this season goes in its last seven weeks. The run of supposedly winnable midseason games is dwindling with too many bitter losses such as Sunday’s, making the dreadful NFC East seemingly less and less winnable, with a record now of 2-7. But finding Smith as a potential quarterback of the future in an autumn that should have been a referendum on Dwayne Haskins is a development no one could have anticipated.
Around this team, the talk all year has been about the young wide receivers and tight ends and running backs who, aside from Terry McLaurin, are unknowns. In two weeks, however, Smith has managed to make them look good enough that it’s plausible to imagine them as a core group heading into next year.
Cam Sims, Isaiah Wright, J.D. McKissic, Steven Sims Jr. — Rivera kept repeating their names Sunday as he talked about a sunny tomorrow he believes is coming soon despite the darkness of the current record. Each, he says, is getting better and better because Smith is leading them there, pulling them through the slogs of the team’s poor early starts to fantastic second halves.
By the end Sunday, McKissic — a wide receiver turned running back — had seven catches, the undrafted Wright had six and quarterback-turned-tight end Logan Thomas had four, one fewer than the once-forgotten Sims.
“The way he distributes the ball, keeps them involved,” Rivera said. “When you’re distributing the ball, every player out there realizes you have to be on your game because he may throw you the ball. You can be the third or fourth option.”
In many ways, Sunday’s game was one Washington should have won by one or two scores. So many first-half drives stalled on bad plays, poor blocking and even a missed field goal. Smith later said he was “shocked” when he looked at the scoreboard late in the first half and saw his team down 17-3. How could it only have three points?
His great value, however, is resilience. Who, after all, is better at looking at disaster and somehow finding a way to douse the fire than the man who almost died and was never supposed to walk the same again, let alone start a professional football game? Washington had the ball four times in the second half after going down 24-3. It scored each time, with touchdowns on the first three possessions and a field goal on the last that tied the score with 16 seconds left.
Three of those drives started inside the Washington 20, the other on its 34. None were gifts but rather long, tedious marches, staring into a scoreboard that kept telling them they were losing. As they moved, Wright, who didn’t even play until the season’s third week, was amazed at Smith’s calm.
“Very poised,” Wright said. “Not flustered.”
At times, Wright admits he himself has been flustered. Everything has been coming so fast. When that happens, he looks to Smith and notices how Smith seems to make everything slow down. Suddenly, the game slows down for Wright as well.
After the game, Smith said that he could call on 13 seasons of similar situations, of long, steady comebacks and the search for ways to win games that seem lost. He smiled and called this “the benefit of a lot of reps” over the years.
The thrill of making his first start in 728 days was gone. He couldn’t even marvel at how he has thrown for more than 300 yards these past two games for the first time in his career. All that mattered was the defeat still burning on the scoreboard down the tunnel from where he sat and the young players he might be able to lead into a future he couldn’t have expected.
It was a strange thought in a strange year. But after everything that’s happened these past couple of years for Alex Smith and the Washington Football Team, it was an oddly normal one, too.
