49ers-Broncos: Looking Ahead At The QB Position

There were plenty of crushing blows in today's 23-20 49ers loss to the Carolina Panthers. One of the many has to be Alex Smith suffering a sprained shoulder early in the third quarter that resulted in an ineffective David Carr coming out to play. I don't have video of the post-game press conferences, but Maiocco tweeted that Smith said he expects to make the trip to London where he will then have an MRI.

Smith indicated he thinks the injury is to his left AC joint. I tweeted injury expert Will Carroll about the injury and what kind of recovery time it could mean. A quick search of Google would indicate a wide variety of potential recovery times depending on the severity. For example, last year Florida Atlantic QB Rusty Smith suffered an AC sprain and missed the final five weeks of the 2009 college football season. At the same time, it could be a low grade sprain and Smith could be playing by next week. We won't get an update until tomorrow early afternoon at the earliest, so we'll definitely have an update at that point.

In the meantime, the 49ers find themselves needing to consider their alternatives for next Sunday's game against the Broncos. David Carr was brought in as the primary backup to Smith and was rolled out today when Smith went down. Carr looked fairly abysmal most of the time as he lacked arm strength and accuracy. The rust was readily apparent. While most people wouldn't like it, I would be really surprised if Carr was not the starting QB next Sunday. That doesn't mean he will have a long leash, but Singletary brought him in to be the #2, and I think he'll stick with that.

Of course, that doesn't mean we have to agree with that decision. I can't imagine there are many people here that would start David Carr next week against the Broncos. And I know we've got some big contingents in support of Troy Smith and/or Nate Davis.

Given that, why not roll out a poll for who you think should be starting on Sunday against the Broncos IF Alex Smith is unavailable to play. This is not a question of who you think will start, but rather who you would WANT starting. And if you vote for David Carr for anything other than trying to be funny (trust me, it wouldn't be funny), I'm sure many folks would like to know why.