Can Alex Smith Save the 49ers?

I recently broke the news to my son that Alex Smith appears to be slotted in as the starting QB for his beloved 49ers. I took the dejected look on his face as a challenge to provide him some hope. Going to the data on QB's is always a iffy proposition as QB stats are the product of the efforts of an entire team, not just one player and given the woeful play of the 49ers over the last few years, I was expecting that this would be a rather fruitless effort in restoring hope.

I pulled up Smith's page on Pro-Football Reference and checked on his performance. I then took his age, years in the league, Yds/Att and interception rate for last season and plugged them into PFR's useful Player Season Finder. I frankly did not believe what I found. Besides Smith, the Player Season Finder found three other players who had a similar performance in Yds/Att and interception rate during their 5th season, at age 26: Drew Brees, Peyton Manning, and Ben Roethlisberger. Looking at a broader range of stats, Smith actually fits in with this group fairly well.

On Yds/Att, QB rating, TD% (indexed by PFR), Int% (indexed by PFR), and Completion Percentage, Smith fits right in. He is better than Big Ben in TD%, QB rating, and Compl%, better than Brees in Int%, and just behind the three on Yds/Att. The other three of course all of Super Bowl rings and multiple All-Star game appearances on their resumes. So what is going on? How can the much maligned Alex Smith, playing for multiple head coaches and offensive coordinators, have delivered a similar performance as these shining examples of QB play?

To try and answer that question, I expanded my search. I removed all the filters on performance, and just looked for QB's in their 5th season while they were 26 years old. Since 1980, there are 33 QB's not named Alex Smith who played their 5th season when they were 26. After eliminating all the QB's with fewer than 8 games played, I loaded their advanced passing stats into two different clustering analyses to find groupings of players that had similar performances across all of the stats. The results of the two analysis were the essentially the same and put Smith in with the following group:

1. Tommy Kramer
2. Steve McNair 
3. Rich Gannon       
4. Bernie Kosar       
5. Neil Lomax         
6. Gary Hogeboom      
7. Trent Dilfer       
8. David Whitehurst   
9. Randall Cunningham 
10. Paul McDonald      
11. Kyle Boller        
12. Tim Couch          
13. Ben Roethlisberger

So this list seems rather more satisfying. Some players who have had success (Gannon, McNair, Boller, Roethlisberger) and some that haven't (Hogeboom, Couch). For the most part this list should provide 49er fans with some hope. There are no spectacular QB's here, but plenty that have played good efficient football and several that achieved more later in their careers (Gannon, Cunningham, McNair).

For some context, the rest of the QB's fall into the following groups:

Stars Flashes No Impact Dan Marino Vince Evans         Dave M. Brown       Peyton Manning      Mike McMahon        Mike Moroski        Chris Miller        Drew Brees          Dave Krieg          Brett Favre         Daunte Culpepper    Aaron Rodgers       Ok, maybe Chris Miller is not really a star, but for the most part, these groupings seem fairly reasonable, so 49er fans, have some hope, Alex Smith may just be Trent Dilfer.

Alex Smith: Surprise Player of the Year

Recent news around Jamarcus Russell and Sam Bradford's contract bring a little attention back to another former first overall pick: Alex Smith of the San Francisco 49ers. With Aaron Rogers having a break out year last year (drafted 23 slots later after such NFL studs as Pacman and Matt Jones) many have regarded Smith's career as a major disappointment. He has certainly not lived up to the expectations of the first overall pick, but that may be changing soon.

Through the magic that is Pro-Football-Reference, we can start to find players that were similar to Alex Smith, and in doing so, a very interesting name pops up: Carson Palmer. My guess is that off the bat you don't believe me, so let me explain. Last season, Smith was 25 and completed 60.5% of his passes, 4.8% of his passes were TDs, only 3.2% of his passes were interceptions and he threw for 5.8 yards per attempt (adjusted yards of course) while, when he was 25, Palmer completed 60.9% of his passes, 4.2% of his passes were TDs, 4.2% were interceptions and he threw for 5.7 yards per attempt (see table below). These are not cherry picked stats either, as across the boards, they are incredibly similar (except of course on interceptions where Smith was much better). So perhaps Smith will not end up as another first pick bust, but rather just a late bloomer.

	Cmp%	TD%	INT%	Adj Yds/Att
Smith	60.5%	4.8%	3.2%	5.8
Palmer	60.9%	4.2%	4.2%	5.7

It is possible of course the similarity between Smith and Palmer is just a coincidence and that this small sample analysis is totally unreliable. To check that, we go back to PFR and check on other 25 year old QBs that have had similar performances. The list is actually pretty impressive and includes Bledsoe, Cutler, Lomax, Carr and Marino. The list also includes JP Losman, so Smith's future is not a lock.

It does however, look like Smith has a real shot if he is given some stability in the coaching situation and remains healthy.