Alex Smith: Vision Blurred During Touchdown Pass

Brian Bahr/Getty Images The San Francisco 49ers were without quarterback Alex Smith after he suffered a concussion in the second quarter of a 24-24 tie game against the St. Louis Rams Sunday. The 49ers had to rely on second-year quarterback Colin Kaepernick for all of the second half, as the Niners failed to get a score in overtime. Smith says he played with blurred vision after taking a vicious hit from Rams linebacker Jo-Lonn Dunbar, which led to his concussion. Smith received the punishing blow with 1:10 remaining in the first quarter as he tried to do a quarterback-sneak on a one-yard run. “He said he had the blurred vision after the quarterback sneak,” Niners head coach Jim Harbaugh told the Associated Press. “There’s no telling. Did that earlier hit contribute? I don’t know. I don’t know Alex knows for sure, either.” Smith did throw a touchdown pass in the game, but he had blurred vision when doing so. He started having concussion symptoms for a while after the big hit. “Yeah, that’s something, you don’t want him out there with blurred vision,” Harbaugh said. “We talked about it. What he expressed was he came up from the sneak and he had blurred vision, and he felt that it would go away. He came over to the sideline and sat down and felt it would go away, and it didn’t. He told me he had blurred vision, and that’s when we made the move.” Smith’s status is currently uncertain for next week’s game against the Chicago Bears on Monday night. The odd thing is that we could see a match-up of the back-up quarterbacks with Jay Cutler also suffering a concussion, which could lead to the Bears starting Jason Campbell or Josh McCown. “Rather than speculate, we’ll let it play out,” Harbaugh said of Smith. “There’s a progression and evaluations that have to be gone through before we’ll really know anyway. … He’s doing much better, had a good night sleep last night, symptoms were positive today. He’ll be visiting with the neurologist later this afternoon. That will be the next step.” Harbaugh used to play quarterback in the NFL, and was very good at what he did for 15 years in the league. Harbaugh knows a thing or two about concussions and claims he’s had multiple in his career. He’s glad the NFL is taking awareness of the issue that is going on in the league. “I think it’s a major point of emphasis,” Harbaugh said. “I don’t have a medical degree. I’m confident in the way the doctors, especially our doctors, their understanding of it and their professional opinion.” The post Alex Smith: Vision Blurred During Touchdown Pass appeared first on FootBasket.