Welcome to Inside the Huddle.

Different this week.

It's a special.

We know you all enjoyed the Green Bay Packers one that we did last season around that defeat.

They suffered in Kansas City.

Well, we've got a really special interview for you today with the quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers Alex Smith. So this is the

perfect time to assess the state of the 49ers franchise and talk everything red and gold

from San Francisco. Really looking forward to this one, Neil. Yeah, and I think it's good to see

a San Francisco team as we get into this state of the franchise. We all remember that team from the 80s being so prominent in the NFL.

They're back as one of the very best teams in the league.

And they're led by such a nice guy at quarterback.

We'll get into the interview and people can hear that for themselves.

Yeah, Alex Smith is not without his doubters, not without his critics, but he knows

that. He understands that. I think he's got a very thick skin. But he also is a quarterback who's

developing. And I think he'll take strides forward even further in 2012. He's one of those guys

that, I'm not just saying it because we got to interview him,

but he is the sort of person you want to root for. I think he's one of the nice guys.

Yeah, he's more of a leader than I expected him to be. You know, because of the struggles he'd

been through, being the number one overall pick coming from the spread offense, it didn't,

it didn't tend, it didn't come across as an extremely strong character, particularly when

Mike Singletary was the coach.

I leveled that accusation.

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