Published October 6, 2011 at CSNBayArea.com

Sports fans in the Bay Area have been fascinated by the Jim Harbaugh-Alex Smith relationship since the day the new 49ers coach was hired.

One of his first actions was to announce that Smith would return as QB, much to the disappointment of The Faithful.

After watching Smith struggle for six years, fans were  convinced that he just couldn’t play in the NFL, and the talk shows were full of anger and frustration at the thought of watching No. 11 fling the ball all over Candlestick Park for another season. People just couldn’t imagine that the new coach, a former QB himself, couldn’t see the disaster right around the corner!

Now, with the 49ers at 3-1, with Smith’s performances ranging from “not horrible” to “pretty damn good,” 49er fans are starting to come around to the notion that Harbaugh may have known what he was doing.

You don’t have to look very far to see examples of QB-coach relationships in similar circumstances that worked out pretty well. One took place in Oakland, where Jim Plunkett, who had suffered through 10 nondescript seasons, hooked up with Tom Flores, a former QB himself, and the two combined for two Super Bowl championships.

Had there been a sports talk radio community in those days, it would have been very interesting how the Plunkett signing would have played on the air.

I had the opportunity to talk to a QB who had an experience like this. Sonny Jurgensen is a Hall of Famer, but looking at his career stats you have to feel for the guy.

He led the Eagles to a 10-4 record in his first year as an NFL starter (he was 27, by the way, that’s how it worked then), then suffered through eight non-winning seasons with Philly and Washington. He had good stats, mostly because his teams were always behind, but had played for a succession of coaches who didn’t “get” the passing game. One of those coaches, ironically, was one of the greatest QBs ever, Otto Graham.

That all changed in 1969. The legendary Vince Lombardi, who had retired from Green Bay after the 1967 season, was ready to go back to coaching. The Redskins hired him, and Jurgensen told me, “People know Lombardi for the Packer Sweep, and the defense, and the toughness, but what I learned was that he really was a master of offensive football. I had open receivers all over the field for the first time in my career. It was like the sun came out.”

Jurgensen led the league in attempts, completions, and passing yards. The Redskins went 7-5-2, their first winning season since 1955. Unfortunately, Lombardi was stricken with cancer, and died before the ‘Skins could build on his success. After one year with an interim coach, George Allen was hired and his defensive mindset propelled the Redskins to Super Bowl VII, but Jurgensen’s days of leading the NFL in passing were over.

Steve Young is another player who spent a couple of years in the USFL, played in the NFL for a terrible team, then came to the 49ers, where the QB position was the center of the universe.

He made a very interesting comment about Harbaugh and Smith on KNBR the week before the season’s first game. He was asked point-blank whether he could see Alex Smith hoisting the Super Bowl trophy, in a 49ers uniform. Young paused for about five seconds, and then said “I can.” He went on to explain that as a guy who played several years for coaches who didn’t understand the QB position and didn’t know how to call plays, he knows personally the difference when you get to a situation where the coach and the system are conducive to quarterback play.

Calling plays in the NFL is a lot harder than it looks from your couch, and anyone who has watched the 49ers for any of the past six seasons knows that with very few exceptions that has been a very weak point for this team. Fans have been very critical of the offensive coordinators over the years, but at the same time they have held Smith ultimately responsible for the team’s failure to move the football.

Young’s primary concern for Harbaugh and Smith this season was that because the fans had seen six years of futility from Smith there was no margin for a slow start. He felt that if the Niners got off to an 0-2 start, the crescendo of boos from the stands would be impossible to ignore, and with only a rookie behind Smith, Harbaugh, despite his own job stability, would be off to a very rocky start with the fans.

Fortunately, that isn’t what happened. In fact you could argue that the opposite has taken place, and Smith has shown enough development in the first four games that even if he has a rough game or even two, he and his new coach will have at least a few weeks to try to work out the kinks.

So next time you see Alex Smith trying to explain what’s different about playing for Jim Harbaugh, understand that what he’s trying to say is, “It’s like the sun came out.”