When Alex Smith's incendiary comments in GQ dropped two weeks ago, it was jarring to read that, after making an extraordinary comeback that required 17 surgeries, he felt unwanted by the Washington coaching staff in training camp.
On Wednesday, Rivera — speaking to reporters ahead of free agency — said he didn't even disagree with everything Smith said in that explosive GQ article.
"We both had a chance to see the other side's perspective," Rivera said of he and Smith's meeting last week. "And to be quite honest with you, I don't disagree with a lot of things that he said. I really don't."
"When I decided to come back, I definitely threw a wrench in the team's plan," Smith told GQ, comments which seemed entirely out of character for the typically under-the-radar quarterback. Regardless of how he felt, that he was willing to say it publicly made his eventual release, which came a little more than a week later, seem all the more inevitable.
In his statement announcing Smith's release, Rivera made the important distinction that Washington was "granting Alex his request to be released," clearly establishing that it was Smith who wanted out first, before reaching the conclusion that it would be "best for both parties to move on."
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"The biggest thing that he and I talked about really was that there really was no road map to get us to where we were," Rivera told reporters Wednesday. "And I told him. I said, 'Alex, I'll be honest. I was scared to death. I had no idea. I didn't know what to expect.' Which I believe he appreciated, was that I just tell him exactly how I felt, how hard it was for us."
"I think that's the thing that everybody forgets," Rivera said. "Alex did a great job. He worked his butt off to put himself in position to come back and play. But I said there's a part that people don't understand, and that is we as a coaching staff had to look through this and think through this, and it was always in the back of my head: What if he gets hurt again? What if he hurts that leg, that specific leg again? I'm gonna be the guy that put him back on the field to let him get hurt again."
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It's a reasonable concern and the other side to the coin of Smith's frustration with having to prove to the coaching staff his surgically rebuilt leg can hold up under pressure. As John Keim noted recently, "Look at how much grief Mike Shanahan caught for putting Robert Griffin III back in the game. Certainly in hindsight, he wishes he hadn't done that."
In their conversation, Rivera told Smith he "fought with that, struggled with that every day."
"That was tough," Rivera said. "As we talked more and more, I think the realization that, hey, there's two sides to this. And as he said, 'Coach, there really is no roadmap to get to where we are today,' so I really appreciated him saying that. But again, like I said, I don't disagree with some of the things that he said in that article. I think they were fair, because you don't know. You come in as a player, and a new coaching staff comes in and there's no ties."
"But the one thing I did tell him," he continued. "I said I want you to understand this. If there was anybody that was behind you the whole way, it was Mr. Snyder. He was the first guy — Mr. Snyder — had come to his house to meet me and tell him, 'Hey, this is the new head coach.' And Alex and I got a chance to sit down and talk.
"We had a great conversation, and when he walked out, I said to Mr. Snyder 'this reminds me of the Thomas Davis story.' When Thomas was coming off of his third knee surgery, he wanted to come back and play, and I thought, 'Wow, that's crazy but we'll see what happens.' Well, I told Mr. Snyder and Mr. Snyder said, 'If he plays, Ron, I'm betting on the old guy.' There's a whole story to that that a lot of people don't know, and I did that, because we don't talk much about it."
"But I really appreciated Alex coming to meet me for breakfast and having the conversation that we did," Rivera said. "And knowing Alex from just this year, he'll get an opportunity to play again. He really will. And he'll do a great job at it, because that's who he is."
Rivera was asked if Smith's calf strain/bone bruise injury late in 2020 impacted his view of Smith's durability moving forward.
"There's a lot of things that factor into all of that stuff," Rivera said. "But as far as I'm concerned, we made a decision that we thought was best for us going forward. And as I said, it was something we had talked about and had asked for his release, and we went ahead and did that."
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