:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/photo_images/8511683/20120818_jla_ad1_604.jpg)
San Francisco 49ers quarterback Alex Smith has been called an "expert" when it comes to the Jim Harbaugh-Greg Roman offense. Smith spoke to the media on Wednesday and went into detail (as much as he could) regarding an array of topics pertaining to the offense.
The Niners offense in general has been a major NFL story line given the added weapons this offseason. They have made significant upgrades to that side of the football, and with a full offseason this time around, there is reason to expect drastic improvement.
The media in Santa Clara had some good questions for Smith on Wednesday, and the quarterback did a great job of enlightening us further of what may be in store this year. For Alex Smith's comments on the offense, continue after the jump.
On open forum with coaching staff:
I think the great thing here, this coaching staff is so much about the best way to do things, not necessarily cookie-cutter or our way. If someone has a good idea, let's jump on and go with it. It's not just me, I think everybody, a lot of people offer up ideas and that's really kind of the idea of the coaching staff is everybody involved.
On quality of coaching staff:
I definitely appreciate the coaching level. The detailed coaching, 'work on this, work on that,' it all comes, it comes out as he sees it. And I think fundamentally, I've improved a lot because of that.
On the offense going forward:
You know, for me at the quarterback, it comes with just being decisive, pulling the trigger, you know, good decisions. Being decisive within that. You know, last year at times, there were opportunities out there and for whatever reason we didn't get 'em, I think maybe unsure of different things, hesitant. I think as an offense and myself speaking, we'll get a little better at pulling the trigger, taking our shots when they're there. You know, executing.
On improving situationally:
Coming off this season, into the offseason, OTA's, you have just a huge catalog of everything, you've got every third down in the entire season. Which is a lot of third downs, and you get to look at how teams are playing us, what we're doing, what we need to do better, things like that.
We've kept ourselves in better situations, we've been ahead of the chains, a lot of positive plays. We talk a lot about negative plays killing drives. You continue to put yourselves in good situations, be productive on first and second down, that helps your third down. You know, we were in a lot of third and longs last year. And the entire NFL in general is not good at third and longs, it's a difficult situation. And that played into our lack of success last year.
On executing plays:
You just continue to get a better sense of what we're trying to do. Play-call intent: you know, what are we trying to get done out of this play-call. And you can do a better job with that; 'hey, we're calling this,' 'this is what we're thinking,'if we don't get that, I'm going here.' And you get better at just understanding all that with the play-call. The play-call is still just coming in but you can do a better job of understanding everything that comes with it, and getting to that faster and just operating quicker.