A feel good story of the holiday season

If you are feeling in need of an uplifting story for this holiday season, cast your attention toward our nation’s capital. No, no — not the political arena of the city (Does anything uplifting ever come from there?) but to the suburban stadium wherein plays the recently renamed Washington Football Team.

Nor do we refer to the play of the team itself. In recent years, The Washington Football Team, formerly known as The Redskins, have played more like the old Washington Senators, of whom Charles Dryden in 1904 famously remarked, “Washington — first in war, first in peace, and last in the American League.” On further thought, those Senators do sound like the ones on Capitol Hill.

What I’m thinking of, actually, is the play of Washington’s quarterback, one Alex Smith.

Smith has had the kind of hard luck career that would send most of us looking for any other gig than our current line of work, but he didn’t begin that way. He was the number one pick overall in the 2005 draft lottery by the San Francisco Giants who had been laboring in the cellar of the NFL for a while. That’s how you get the first pick.

Anyway, Smith played well for them even though he was plagued by injuries all the way to 2012 when he was benched in favor of Colin Kaepernick, he of the famous bended knee. Then Smith was dealt to the Kansas City Chiefs. There, again, he played well but was again passed over in favor of the young, exciting, Patrick Mahomes. Sense a pattern here?

I don’t know who labeled Smith with the tag of being a “game manager” quarterback, but whoever it was did him no favors. In every other area, being a manager is something to be desired, but in football, it means that the QB is just a vanilla guy who makes the safe play and who doesn’t do anything very exciting, even when he is winning games.

Now it is true that Smith is the old fashioned quarterback who stands in the pocket and tries to find the open receiver, and it is true that both times he lost his job to a younger fellow who didn’t mind using his legs to make yards. But a win, no matter how you get it, is a win, right? Evidently not!

Smith was still standing in the pocket when he suffered the worst broken leg anyone has seen since Joe Theismann had his career ended by one. Smith was out two full years, had 17 surgeries to fight infection, was told he might have to have an amputation, had to wear an exterior bone brace drilled into his leg bones for a full year, and still fought his way back to being the back-up QB at the beginning of this season.

He was finally named the starting quarterback several weeks ago, and his team has been on a tear ever since, reminding us of his stints in San Francisco and Kansas City.

So let’s feel good about as heroic a stand against misfortune anyone has ever seen anywhere. And if Smith isn’t named the Comeback Player of the Year, there will have been a dirty deal done that would have been at home only downtown in the Capital itself. 

Millerton resident Theodore Kneeland is a former teacher and coach — and athlete.