A source close to Alex Smith wants to set the record straight about controversial comments the Washington Football Team quarterback made to GQ magazine.
Smith inadvertently made waves this week by telling GQ, in a Q&A interview published on Tuesday, that he "threw a wrench" in Washington's plans with his decision to return to football when training camp arrived last summer. "They didn't want me there," Smith told GQ.
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"I talked to a source close to Alex yesterday," JP Finlay relayed on his 106.7 The Fan radio show Thursday afternoon. "One thing they want to make clear is that Alex was talking to a reporter that didn't know anything about football, and if you go back, the first story that came out had to be edited because Alex said 'IR' and the reporter thought that meant 'high arm.' This is not a dude that knows football. And that's not a shot. I don't know lifestyle; I couldn't go write a fashion piece. I could write about football because that's my lane."
Indeed, the original copy in the GQ piece has since been edited, replacing "then they tried to high-arm me" with "then they tried to IR me."
Here's the copy as it originally appeared in GQ: "Well yeah. I mean, they tried to put me on PUP [Physically Unable to Perform] for two weeks, then they tried to high-arm me. I felt like I still hadn't had my fair shake at that point. I wanted to see if I could play quarterback and play football, and I feel like I hadn't been given that opportunity yet to find that out. It’s like getting this close to the end line of a marathon and they're telling you that you can't finish the race."
"And more important than that," Finlay continued. "The message from the source I talked to close to Alex is that, listen, there's no animosity towards the organization. None of those comments were meant to make anybody mad. He was simply telling the story of what happened."
"And I think everybody understands that Alex had to convince the coaching staff he could play because nobody thought he was gonna play," he continued. "And I think what happens is we get very, very excited about stuff we haven't heard before and Alex saying he felt like he threw a wrench into the plans jumps out to us. Right?"
"Alex doesn't say stuff like that very often, and so it jumps out," Finlay said. "But I think if you take a step back, we all know what threw a wrench in the plans. The plan was Haskins. If it wasn't Haskins, it was Kyle Allen. So those are just some contextual information around that interview, that I don't think anybody ever expected to cause as much of an uproar as it did."
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