QB Smith’s comeback is confounding — even to wife

Late on the day that Alex Smith played his first football game in nearly two years, his wife Elizabeth stood on a windblown FedEx Field concourse talking about the why.

“I understand,” she said. “People don’t get it.”

Tucked behind all those breathless tributestheselastseveralmonthsaboutthe Washington quarterback’s unimaginable comeback are the sad-faced grimaces and the half frowns of judgment that say no man who nearly lost his leg and his life should dare play football again. Not when that leg has been cut open 17 times by surgeons and scraped clean of muscle and tissue to rid it of infection. Not when the surface of that leg’s lower half is an undulating patchwork of skin grafts and

bumps.

The last thing anyone wanted to see was Smithbreak again the first time he fell under a crush of 300-pound men.

So, yes, Elizabeth Smith could grasp the horror everyone felt about her husband’s slow climb back to football, even as she pushed out sunnyInstagramposts ofAlexinawheelchair, Alex in a cast, Alex walking, Alex running, Alex throwing, Alex working toward the return most people seemed to dread. What man does something like this? What was the point?

“I didn’t get it for the longest time [either],” she said.

Then she said this: “Knowinghowmuchaninjury like this can affect a person mentally, physically and emotionally, for Alex to overcomethat andget himself back to the point where he can be bigger than any of this is amazing.”

In the few interviews Alex Smith has given about his comeback, he has talked about building up “walls” then banging through them as he attacked each obstacle, finding a way to beat it until he couldn’t stop. At his one news conference this past summer, he compared his zeal to play again to “running a marathon and getting close to the end of the race,” where theneedtofinish drovehimeven more.

“People need to understand Alex sets goals in front of him and it’s always just knocking down the next one and the next one,” Elizabeth Smith said.

She thought about the game he had just played, the last two minutes of the first half and all of the second in a 30-10 loss to the Los Angeles Rams in which he replaced injured starter Kyle Allen, and she knew that night would not be one of celebration. Instead, her husbandwouldwant to lie inbed as he always did when playing in the past, watching it over and over, studying the screen for flaws, trying to understand what it was that had gone wrong.

“Alex’s mind set is: Get the win,” she said. “So you need to know Alex is just going to keep pushing through until he can get himself back towinning football games.”

In the weeks after Alex Smith’s right leg snappedwhenhewassackedbyHouston’sJ.J. Watt and Kareem Jackson on Nov. 18, 2018, those around the team who quietly proclaimed the injury career-ending always addedsomeformofthesamecaveat: Ifanyone can come back, it’s Alex. Though he had been inWashington for less than a year at the time, his competitivenesswas already legend in the locker room, where players spoke with awe about the way he fought for first downs in casual, meaningless offseason practices.

The only person around the franchise who could possibly relate to his predicament, Joe Theismann — the organization’s all-time leading passer — had broken his leg in a similarly gruesome fashion 33 years to the day of Smith’s injury and was never able to play again. Like Smith, Theismann pushed hard to getbackto football, eventhrowing at practices to the defensive backs two years later. But he knew that at his age, 37, in an era when quarterbacks were often finished at 35, he wouldn’t be able to return. His career was done.

Smith, given the benefit of modern surgical techniques and better equipment as well as the financial resources to afford the best doctors and trainers, had the tiniest of chances. ButwhatstruckTheismannthemost was that Smith had the desire to play again. Most people in Smith’s situation find away to talk themselves out of the impossible. Smith was the one personwhoneeded to conquer it.

“I know how hard he worked and how important it was to him,” Theismann said Sunday, while watching the game from Memphis. His emphasis was on the word “important.”

This can’t be about money. Alex Smith has already made close to $200 million in his career. He’s alreadywealthy in away very few professional football players will ever be. It’s strange the way many football players can’t quit a game that destroys their bodies, leaving many ofthemtowalk throughthe restof their liveswith a lurch-like gait. And yet, he doesn’t seem so addicted to football that leaving the sportwould be impossible for him.

Instead, his push to play again, has been driven by the consumption to finish a checklist toodauntingformost totry, charging forwarduntileverysquarehasbeenfilledwith an “X.”

“Honestly, if Alex never played a game but he worked as hard as he could to get to that point and it just wasn’t in his control, I think he’d be okay with that,” Elizabeth Smith said. “But if had given in — [and] there were countless days in the middle of it when you want to give up — he would have had a hard time with it, you know?”