OPINION

By Greg Cosell

updated 1:01 p.m. ET Sept. 1, 2008

Alex Smith. Matt Leinart. As the 2008 season opens this week, neither is an NFL starting quarterback. Both have earned that status purely on merit.

For Smith, the No. 1-overall pick in the '05 draft, you have to go back to January of this year. That's when Mike Martz was hired as the San Francisco 49ers' offensive coordinator. That was the moment of truth for Smith. We knew he would face challenges he never could have anticipated.

No coordinator is tougher on quarterbacks than Martz. And he does not wait for game action to evaluate whether they have what it takes to be successful. It starts in the classroom and proceeds through offseason workouts and minicamps. Martz has a simple but powerful code: If a quarterback cannot handle his demanding and structured coaching in meetings and on the practice field, there is no way he can perform at a high level in front of 70,000 people on Sunday afternoon.

Martz's pass offense is predicated on exact and meticulous timing: The drop of the quarterback -- whether it's three steps, five steps or seven steps -- is coordinated precisely with the depths of the receivers' routes. There are no gray areas.

And it's all about tempo: Quickness of your drop into the pocket, speed of decision making, a compact delivery that gets the ball out fast. Think Marc Bulger when Martz was the head coach with the St. Louis Rams. It was drop, plant and throw with anticipation to receivers not even coming out of breaks yet.

You cannot be deliberate and methodical with Martz. And Smith does everything too slowly.

When studying tape of Smith's games this preseason, I saw a quarterback who was just not quick enough with his drop and set. He has a long throwing motion with a tendency to drop the ball down to his waist as he delivers. That takes too much time. And there's no snap to his throws.

Watch on film, and Smith's passes just don't come out with much on them. And it's not a function of arm strength. It's about transferring your weight from your back foot forward, so you drive through the throw. Smith does not do that, and that significantly impacts his ability to complete the intermediate 18- to 22-yard passes that are the staple of the Martz passing game.

And Smith does not have that cultivated sense of timing and anticipation. He waits too long to pull the trigger. You rarely see him let it loose before receivers come out of breaks, and that's the signature feature of the Martz system.

My sense is that Martz sees some Bulger in J.T. O'Sullivan. Like Bulger, O'Sullivan is not big or physical, does not have a rifle arm, but he has a quick and compact delivery and the ball gets out at the right time to the right receiver.

Combine tape study with an understanding of Martz's passing philosophy, and it's no surprise that Smith is not the starting quarterback for the 49ers.

Leinart is a little different. His shortcomings transcend coordinators and systems and will make it difficult for him to be a quality NFL starting quarterback.

Start with arm strength: It's average at best. And don't let people tell you that arm strength is overrated as a defining attribute in the NFL. You can not prosper at this level if you cannot make stick throws into tight windows in critical situations in the third and fourth quarters of close games. Leinart cannot do that with any consistency.

The only chance you have to be successful in the NFL with an average arm is to compensate by being very good in other areas.

Think of it his way: If you can't throw with enough velocity to defeat the speed and quickness of NFL defenses, and the varied and hybrid coverage schemes that are commonplace, you must have great timing, great anticipation, warp speed decision making and consistent accuracy in the short to intermediate areas. Leinart does not possess any of those attributes.

Watch Leinart on film, and you will see a sloppy and undisciplined quarterback with a deliberate drop, slow feet in the pocket and a methodical delivery.

Nothing about Leinart is quick and fast.

And there's one other issue that is hard to overcome. In the NFL, quarterbacks must be able to execute from the pocket with a lot of bodies around them. You do not get clean pockets often; you will not have functional space to step up and deliver comfortably the way you did in college, and certainly the way Leinart did at USC, when he was rarely under any duress.

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Leinart really struggles when the pocket gets muddied. That's a function of his lack of precision and discipline. His fundamentals, not good to begin with, break down, and he does not have the foot quickness or arm strength to offset those deficiencies.

Leinart, to have any chance to be a quality NFL starter, must be a precise technician in everything he does. Up to this point, he is not even close to being that kind of player.

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