Over on the ESPN NFCW blog, as janky as that place is, Mike Sando does in fact do a stellar job blogging for our division. He is very hands on, very well-reasoned, very thorough, and maximizes his press access in order to gain interviews and insights on all of our divisional teams. He also does a weekly podcast with other ESPN bloggers. The link to this weeks podcast is after the jump.

Today, he rolled out his admittedly premature NFL MVP candidates. He puts Alex Smith at #7.

You can find his blog post over at ESPN, but I am going to link to his podcast audio because it is there where he really delves into his understanding of our offense, our team, and of Alex Smith. He uses insightful quotes from Greg Roman to facilitate the discussion.

The discussion starts at around 25 minutes in, so feel free to jump ahead. The early part is some discussion on our 49ers regarding the power rankings, and some discussion about egregious refereeing. I thought Sando did a good job of highlighting how and why Alex is doing very well at this point. Take a listen...

http://espn.go.com/espnradio/play?id=8370551

PS: Fanpost? Fanshot? I'm confused by which I should use for what. Originally I would have liked to just post the link to the audio along with a short blurb. But I get turned around with word requirements and audio/video linkage. If this is in the wrong place, or if I've used this feature incorrectly, or if I could have utilized the feature better, please let me know. Thanks NN.