Quotes from Alex Smith

When you take shots downfield, you want to be good at them.

There are a lot of peripheral things that you have to deal with in this league, and I dealt with a lot of them when I came in. It's everything from being on your own to facing the media.

As flashy as draft picks are, the reality of them helping out in Year One anyway is not necessarily the case. That's not the reality.

The real football starts in training camp.

You only have one brain. There's no replacement surgery for that.

When I was young, I just tried to please everybody.

In the pocket, you do have some protections, but you get out of the pocket, and defenders' eyes get big. Sometimes you learn that the hard way.

Most of the time, you're just trying to be the point guard out there based on the play call and the defense that you're getting; that really dictates where the football goes.

For me, it's about winning games. I'm trying to score more points than the other team. I don't really care how we do it.

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

I don't measure myself in my contract in terms of what I'm making.

You get a taste of playing in the playoffs and what that's like, and it's a completely different world. You get a taste in those meaningful games. You get that taste, and you can't get it out. You want more.

As a QB, it's a team game, and you're all out there in it.

I'm going to play for me and not play for anyone else except my teammates and the guys that matter.

I enjoy the challenge of coming together with my teammates and playing well for them.

It is healthy to have competition and intense competition, and then, when you walk away from it, you are still teammates, and you play the same position and that we can still put the team first.

You play for your teammates; you play for each other.

To continue to fight, not get frustrated, to stay together and find a way - I think that's important. I think good teams do that.

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 think to kind of get over the hump of that, to change perception, it can be difficult. It's a tall task. And it takes a long time.

I don't know if there were many pros for me playing early. I feel like I dug myself a pretty deep hole that rookie year.

You're frustrated when things aren't going right. When you're out there, you have your piece of it, your view. It isn't until usually the next day when you're watching the film that you get to put all the pieces together: 'Oh, this is what happened on that play'; 'This is why I did that.' You don't totally know that game day.

I think you have to enjoy the wins. If you're not enjoying the process, there's a problem. You're not doing it for all the right reasons.

The No. 1 stat is wins. As a quarterback, you get evaluated on winning.

When you're a quarterback, and you're dropping back, I can't watch what the receivers are doing.