A lot of players have had one good season. My opinion that Alex is below average seems to be held by your FO as well seeing as how they went after PeyPey and then lowballed the fuck out of Alex. Can he even afford to live in San Fran on that salary?
1. you are basing your "alex got benched lulz!" history on guys like mike singletary and mike martz benching him. one of those guys has no fucking clue what he is doing. the other didn't actually bench alex, he just chose his son (JT Osullivan) over alex smith..... because JTO had been in his offense for like 3 seasons prior.
2. alex had a great year last year. his previous 2 years i would call "good". he had an 80-85 QB rating in both years. in his last 5 starts of 2010, he threw 8 td's and 1 int. so, dating back to 2010, he is on a streak where he is 16-5 with 25 td's and 6 int's. all he needed was a decent coach to push him over the top, and you see what happened when he got that.
3. the steelers almost kicked ben to the curb after he raped for the 10th or 15th time or whatever it was. shit happens, mistakes are made or almost made. peyton is an upgrade for about 30 teams in the NFL, and that includes the steelers.
4. we didn't low ball alex smith at all. he makes an average of $8 mil a year. if you want to look at it without any coaching factors or prior history factors with him learning another new system then fine, you can say we low balled him. the truth of the matter is harbaugh is such a great coach that we could have success with kapernick or josh johnson or tolzien. alex is better than all of them but we wouldn't be fucked without alex. alex would be in a bad situation without us. going to the seahawks, with a coach who has no clue on how to develop a qb, would have been bad for him even if it paid more money. same with the dolphins.
5. alex isn't a dumb fuck like jamarcus russell or roofles. he has plenty of money and doesn't live an elaborate life style. he still drives the pickup truck he had in college. he could retire tomorrow and be set for life.
but keep on making excuses for alex and the 49ers succeeding! better than me having to defend failures