Smith makes his comeback under center

LANDOVER— When Washington quarterback Alex Smith left FedEx Field on the afternoon of Nov. 18, 2018, his right leg had been shattered in two places, with bone having pierced the skin in a compound fracture. He rode in a red cart to an ambulance. The ambulance’s wailing siren could be heard over the roar of the crowd.

That was before the operation to fix the break, the bacterial infection that set in and wouldn’t leave, the fight to save his leg and eventually his life when he became septic, the months in a wheelchair, the struggle to walk, then run, then the seemingly foolhardy decision to play football again. Ultimately, he had 17 surgeries on the leg, which cost him gobs of tissue and muscle and left him with a limp for which he must wear a special titanium brace.

So on Sunday afternoon, when Washington starting quarterback Kyle Allen left with an injury late in the second quarter and Smith

stepped into an NFL game for the first time since that fateful day nearly two years ago, Smith probably didn’t notice that he was just four yards from where the ball was snapped on the play that broke his leg.

Itwas “almost a blessing” that he had no time to think before going into the game, he said after Washington’s 30-10 loss to the Los Angeles Rams.

That Smith completed only 9 of17 passes for 37 yards and was sacked six times Sunday hardly mattered. For most of the past two years, almost anyone involved with Washington’s team had said Smith’s return was impossible. Not long after

Smith’s release from Inova Fairfax Hospital in December of 2018, a person familiar with Smith’s condition said the quarterback would have a “normal life” but added that a normal life would never allow him to evade a pass rush in a professional football game.

So certain was the team that Smith would never play again, it acquired his replacement, Dwayne Haskins, in the first round of the 2019 NFL draft. Even after Smith pushed through 2019 in a remarkable recovery that became the subject of an ESPN documentary, it was still difficult to imagine him back on the field. When doctors cleared Smith to practice this August, Washington’s new coach, Ron Rivera, was cautiously optimistic but moved ahead with Haskins as the starter and Allen as the backup. Smith appeared more like a decision to be put off for another time.

But then Rivera suddenly benched Haskins last week, turning Allen into the starter and Smith the backup.

“I’d be lying if I said there weren’t a lot of days when I didn’t think it was going to happen,” Smith admitted Sunday.

In Section 10, Row 15, Seat 15, Smith’s wife, Elizabeth, felt like she was “going to vomit” the moment her husband entered the game. Allowed in the stadium for the first time this year with a small group of players’ family members, Elizabeth Smith sat with their three children, Hudson, Hayes and Sloan, certain Alex, as the backup, wasn’t going to play.

She had cried when she saw him run onto the field for the first time as an active player again before the game.