Or should that be moron Alex Smith? Anyhow, Jim Harbaugh, unsolicited and unprovoked, unleashed a furious and all-encompassing tirade supporting his QB of the near future, Alex Smith. In a nutshell (and yeah, I’m a nut with shells), Harbaugh said he was merely ‘evaluating’ Peyton Manning in an effort to see what he looked like. He supposedly told Alex about this, and he didn’t have a problem. The front office was aware of all this, and no one had any hurt feelings or problems with the evaluation.

When asked for details of these conversations, Harbaugh was a little less forthcoming. He did say this, “There was nothing said to Alex that wasn’t said to Peyton Manning or in house here.” Take that for what it’s worth. Or take it as a huge smokescreen to cover up the Niners intentions to sign the injured and fragile Peyton. Frankly, I don’t care very much. It was BSPN fodder for a couple weeks, and provided blog frenzies here and all over the internets.

Either way, the money was a pretty big obstacle to deal with. Sign Manning, and you really limit what you can do going forward. Is it worth one possible Super Bowl season to mortgage the future of the team suddenly weakened by an onerous salary, and a guy who has about a 3% chance to fullfill his deal? Smith said he would have stayed had Manning signed, but that sounds like another load of what Harbaugh was selling.

Still and all, they made the right choice.