Point No. 3: There's good reason to be optimistic about 49ers quarterback Alex Smith this year.

I've had major doubts about whether Smith would ever get his act together as an NFL quarterback, but the former first pick overall in the 2005 NFL Draft quietly had a breakthrough season in 2009 when he took over as the team's starter on November 1.

Smith's personal growth was overshadowed a bit by the team's 5-5 record during those starts. He posted a career-best 60.5% completion rate during a total of 11 game appearances and threw 18 touchdown passes -- two more than he threw during 16 starts back in 2006. And one statistic that really convinced me that Smith has turned the corner was his incredibly low rate of poor throws as scored by STATS last season. Just 10.5% of Smith's passes to open receivers were off the mark, a rate that put him in a tie for second-best in the league along with the Vikings' Brett Favre and just barely off the 10.3% pace of former Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner. The Saints' Drew Brees (11.1%), the Steelers' Ben Roethlisberger (12.1%) and the Colts' Peyton Manning (12.8%) rounded out the league's top performers.

• http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/alex-smith-49ers-have-reason-for-optimism