Everyone held their breath. Everyone knew how long it had been, 693 days, since Alex Smith they last saw Alex Smith on a football field. Everyone remembers the Week 11 game in 2018 when Smith last dropped back to pass and suffered a gruesome leg injury.
And everyone could not believe they were seeing him return to FedEx Field Sunday nearly two years and over 17 surgeries later.
For Elizabeth Smith, his wife, she felt like she was “going to vomit” the moment Smith ran onto the field to replace Washington Football starter Kyle Allen in the 2nd quarter.
Elizabeth, who was sat with her three children - Hudson, Hayes, and Sloan - cried watching him warm-up before the game, the first time her husband was active this season following Dwayne Haskins’ benching.
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“Just for him to be able to come to this point was incredible,” Elizabeth Smith told The Washington Post’s Les Carpenter.
“We were at a place where we weren’t certain he’d be able to walk and live, all these things, and to see him work so hard and accomplish so much — when this guy puts his mind to something, he just doesn’t stop, and I think that was something really special,” she said.
Alex said he was glad his family was able to attend his comeback, despite the many restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
"I did get to see my family. It was nice," Alex Smith said after the game Sunday. "Obviously, it worked out with the sense that they let family into this game. I appreciated them being there and I know my wife felt better about things being here. Certainly very cool to have my kids out there. In that sense, it was obviously great."
This was a long and winding road back to the NFL wasn’t a foregone conclusion. Smith suffered a brutal injury, then had multiple complications and infections and at times it was a question if the injury would cost Smith his life.
“For so long it wasn’t plausible, it wasn’t ever going to happen, and then as he would slowly start to work out and go through physical therapy and all these things and he’d come home and be like, ‘You have no idea what I just did today,’ thinking that he’d never be able to do each step,” Elizabeth Smith told The Post. “And then each step he got closer and closer, and then you have those long pillow talk conversations of: ‘Is this going to happen? Are you really gong to do this? Is it really worth it?’ And I understand as a wife, had he never come along and done this, he’d probably never be okay 20 years from now. It’s something he needed to work through and get to that point.”
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Doug Smith, Alex’s father, was watching his son’s return to the NFL in San Diego. Before the game he told his son it was an accomplishment just to be active and ready to play, but those feelings changed to pride toe see to seeing him play.
“Tremendous pride in his effort and desire and work,” Doug Smith told The Los Angeles Times. “This is something he wanted and thought he could do, was going to put the time in to try to get there.
“For your kids, you’re there to try to support them. If he’d have come away and said, ‘I’m never going to play again,’ we would have supported that too.”
Doug sad everyone teared up watching Alex return to the NFL, adding, “This is something he wanted and thought he could do, was going to put the time in to try to get there.”
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But Alex had the desire to play. And wanted to prove he could do it, even believing that he needed to get hit again, despite the risk of injury, to get a bit more of a “boost of confidence” in his ability to return.
That feeling about getting hit wasn’t mutual. “For me, I don’t get that same boost of adrenaline,” Elizabeth Smith told The Post. “Anxiety is the way I’d put it.”