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- Mar 20, 2019
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The Chiefs became perennial Super Bowl contenders once Patrick Mahomes became one of the best young quarterbacks the league has ever seen. His predecessor, Alex Smith, has had a much different ride in the two seasons since the trade that sent him to Washington.
Smith, speaking with ESPN’s Outside The Lines, provides a candid assessment of the 2018 broken leg and the infection that complicated his recovery dramatically.
Smith told ESPN that he’s “very much lucky to be alive” following an infection that turned septic, necessitating an extended process aimed at saving his life, and then saving his leg.
“I had a pretty serious infection,” Smith told ESPN. “They had a lot of complications with it.”
The struggle kept Smith hospitalized. More than a year later, he doesn’t recall much of the early stages of it.
“[The] next thing I remember is waking up several weeks later faced with the decision of amputation or limb salvage at that point,” Smith said.
Now healed, the first overall pick in the 2005 draft reiterated his desire to play again.
“There’s enough there that I can go out there and play,” Smith said. “Knowing that, yeah, failure is a possibility. . . . I need to prove that I can come back and play quarterback in the NFL, and if I can do that, that would be great and it’ll get figured out.”
Given the odds Smith already has beaten, getting back onto the field would be the easy part. Everyone should be rooting for that to happen.