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		Smith's fight looks for not as O'Sullivan will be starter By David Zizmor August 21, 2008

	CHICAGO--49ers quarterback Alex Smith has kind of fallen on hard times and part of it really has nothing to do with his play on the field. He's just had a tough time off the field because of the suicide of his best friend recently and that's been clearly been a distraction to him. Smith has been trying to absorb all the new information that's been coming at him with this new offense that Mike Martz has installed. These off field distractions has kind of hampered his efforts to really step up his game and take that first quarterback spot. At the same time this started before any of the on field issues happened. Martz had been the offensive coordinator now for several months and Smith had all that time to work on the plays in the playbook and learn everything and it still hasn't happened for him. Every time he steps on the field he still looks like he's a shade slow. In commanding this offense Smith is still trying to get on track. In the case of J.T. O'Sullivan who had experience on Martz' offense and looked much crisper and cleaner and O'Sullivan had a better understanding of what was going on. Smith on the other hand has just thrown behind receivers and didn't look like he knew where everybody was supposed to be. Because of that your not seeing Smith as the first guy you’re seeing him as the second string. That compounds the fact that throwing behind receivers was a problem that Smith had last year in the 49ers offense and even in the year before it's one of the things that Smith is trying to get over. Smith in past seasons has had trouble getting receivers in stride and he's made improvements as this pre season has progressed and he's hit guys better in stride but it hasn't been consistently for him, and that's really been the biggest problem for Smith. He has not been consistently on the same page where the guys are supposed to be. Now the question is if this is a problem with the receivers or is this a problem with Smith and the fact that Smith has now done this for four years leaves the coaches to believe the problem is with Smith. It can't be the receivers for four straight years it's got to be a problem with their quarterback and with that in mind Smith has kind of stuck himself in that number two role. Maybe down the road if O'Sullivan stumbles or if O'Sullivan gets injured. Right now Smith is not playing well enough in either of the first two preseason games to steal that job from O'Sullivan. The 49ers came into camp saying this was going to be a competition and nobody was going to be handed the quarterback job out of the gate and that O'Sullivan, Smith and Shaun Hill will all get an equal shot at winning the job. Hill has not been impressive at all and certainly is not looking like the guy that he was like last year. Smith has been a little bit better and he's gotten more reps but he's only got second-string reps and O'Sullivan has stolen Smith's job from him. Alex Smith was the number one pick overall four years ago and O'Sullivan clearly was not he was not even a first rounder he was a late round pick. O'Sullivan's strength has been that he understands Mike Martz complex system that Martz runs and he feels comfortable with it. O'Sullivan is going to win the job from Smith. David Zizmor does weekly analysis on 49ers football for Sportstalk Radio.