Alex Smith’s once-unimaginable return to football seems imminent.
The seasoned quarterback will be with doctors from the Washington team on Monday, and is expected to begin the training camp on the active / physically disabled list, NFL network insiders Ian Rapoport and Tom reported Pelissero from NFL Network. With Smith in the building, he can give his younger teammates in the quarterbacks his wisdom while continuing his field work, Rapoport added.
The development follows on Monday after it was announced on Friday that Smith’s doctors had released him for returning to football activities.
Smith’s cruel compound break ended his season in November 2018, but that was just the beginning of his problems. Smith was operated on to repair the fracture and soon developed a carnivorous bacterial infection that almost cost him his life. He soon became septic and shifted his doctors’ focus from a way back to the field to find a way to save his life.
This started a long, arduous journey for the quarterback, who underwent 17 operations and carried a complicated, halo-like device known as an external fixator to keep his leg stable at all times. He was finally released from the braces a little over a year ago, but his way back to normal life was far from over.
Now it seems that his long struggle is finally over. Smith’s future could not be in Washington, where the franchise was forced to plan for the future in Smith’s absence. It designed quarterback Dwayne Haskins from the US state of Ohio in 2019 and essentially put him behind the wheel in 2020. But if Smith ends up taking more than one ceremonial moment in his NFL career – all signs appear to indicate – will complete one of the most unlikely comeback stories in the game’s history.
