The Washington Football Team has officially released Alex Smith, source confirmed. He's now a free agent for the first time in his career and the team saves close to $15M in cap space.
— Nicki Jhabvala (@NickiJhabvala) March 5, 2021
The report has already made its way around the sporting world news cycle, but now it’s also been made official by the team: QB Alex Smith is being released by the Washington Football Team.
After heroically mounting an improbable comeback from a gruesome leg injury suffered in 2018, Smith underwent 17 total surgeries and found his way back to the football field where he was somehow able to get back into the competition at a high level.
In 2020, Smith came in and started six games for Washington, going 5-1 in those contests and leading the team to an unexpected playoff berth, the franchise’s first since 2015. Unfortunately, a leg injury caused him to sit out the wild-card game, and that ultimately gave the team enough pause to release him today.
There were a few weeks at the start of this offseason where it seemed like Ron Rivera might keep Smith around for the future, finding a way to rework his contract so that he wasn’t a $24 million cap hit in 2021, but after Smith’s comments about not feeling wanted by the team came out in GQ a few weeks ago, it became pretty clear that the two were headed for a mutual breakup.
Now, on the free-agent market, Smith will be looking for a new place to go, and hopefully a new team to play for. He proved in 2020 that he can still play if given the chance, and assuming that he can stay healthy, he might be a valuable commodity to whoever wants him.
