“It was a lot,“ he recalled. “I felt like I had to be perfect. I struggled with that my first few years, walking onto a field on eggshells. Trying not to make any mistakes. I got to be perfect, it was every day at practice, in the meeting rooms, kind of became my own worst enemy.
“As anybody can imagine, you try to do anything let alone play quarterback as a rookie, that’s certainly a recipe for disaster.”It also didn’t help that Smith was frequently injured during his early years with the 49ers. He missed games in both 2005 and 2007 — and then after being replaced by Shaun Smith as the starter during 2008’s training camp, he was placed on injured reserve when it was learned that a wire placed in his shoulder to repair his 2007 shoulder injury had cut through the bone.
