Alex Smith

“You look at the best players in the league, the best players at quarterback - I mean Drew Brees, Peyton Manning, the top names - none of those guys are throwing it through a brick wall. They...”

“I carried around a lot of weight and anxiety - expectations of being a top draft pick and fulfilling those. It was really burdensome and not fun. Stressful. I had to go through some things b...”

“At the combine and at my workouts, I tried to be the perfect player. I tried to promote my strengths and conceal my weaknesses, and on paper, I kind of succeeded: I was the first pick in the...”

“Obviously, flagrant things have to be called. There are rules. You have got to play to the rules, no question.”

“This is the honest truth: I could absolutely care less on yards per game. I think that's a totally overblown stat.”

“I was on some bad teams, and I played bad as a young player, certainly, at times. And that all mounts. Yeah, that all mounts. The perception. Everything that goes into that. And so, yeah, I...”

“We can only control how we react and how we respond, and that complex but so simple idea helped me survive.”

“That's a special time, to get drafted.”