Alex Smith concludes 49ers workouts, happy with progress

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Camp Alex II is officially over.

Nobody knows for certain when the San Francisco 49ers will begin training camp. Or if Alex Smith can be as successful a quarterback this fall as he has been this summer.

The 49ers' former and apparently future quarterback ended his final scheduled informal team workout Friday. After organizing two separate four-day minicamps at San Jose State that included most of the team's offensive players, Smith said he has installed about as much of new coach Jim Harbaugh's West Coast system as he can this summer.

All he can do now is wait for the NFL lockout to end so he can show how much the workouts really accomplished.

"I know what I installed and everything I basically threw at the wall. I don't know how much of it stuck to the wall," said Smith, a free agent expected to re-sign with the team. "And I think that's going to be the test when these guys come back, whenever this thing ends, how much of it stuck."

At the very least, Smith believes the workouts have put the 49ers in a better position.

San Francisco has among the most to lose the deeper the labor disagreement goes, with so much under Harbaugh that is unknown and unsettled. Smith spent just a few hours with Harbaugh and his staff when the lockout was briefly lifted, leaving the team's headquarters with boxes of game highlights and a playbook.

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Smith studied the information and relayed that to his teammates during classroom sessions he taught on a drawing board. He even quizzed them when it was over and awarded undisclosed prizes, revealing only that receiver Kevin Jurovich left happiest.

The two dozen or so players at most of the workouts -- down to 10 offensive players on the last day because of the upcoming holiday weekend -- also went into Spartan Stadium for about 90 minutes to run plays each day.

"I got put in a position where I just kind of felt like I needed to do it," Smith said. "All of a sudden, I didn't know how long the lockout was going to go, as it got longer and longer, more and more I felt like we were behind the eight ball and needed to do something."

That leadership quality has been sorely missing from San Francisco's quarterback.

The 49ers haven't had a winning season or reached the playoffs since 2002, and inconsistency at the position might be the biggest reason why. With the exception of receiver Michael Crabtree, who has openly questioned whether Smith is the presumed starter, players at the workouts have said all the right things about Smith.

There's still little from his past play to suggest he will be the franchise's long-term solution, and the presence of second-round pick Colin Kaepernick figures to ignite the fan pessimism that revolves around Smith the first time the 2005 No. 1 overall pick throws an interception.

Smith will be the first to acknowledge the workouts he organized will be meaningless if he can't finally deliver consistently when it counts. The only action from this summer Harbaugh will see will be on video from the workouts Smith taped. The rest will be up to the quarterback to prove in front of the new coach.

Smith is flirting with the idea of holding another minicamp or even a larger session to mimic training camp if the lockout persists into late July. With so many free agents on the defensive side, Smith isn't sure he could find 11 players to fill out a roster -- and he wouldn't hold contact drills anyway, for fear of injuries.

Smith and others will continue to lift weights and exercise at San Jose State in smaller groups in the coming weeks, waiting to find out when training camp begins -- and whether Smith can be as accomplished a quarterback against an NFL defense.

"I would feel pretty good at this point if training camp started," Smith said. "Training camp is where the bulk of the work comes in anyway. You love the offseason program, but I think it serves as the same type of thing. It's an introduction to this stuff. The real football starts in training camp."

Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press

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Sides make progress on revenue split with N.Y. talks on tap

MINNEAPOLIS -- At 4 p.m. Thursday, the NFLPA conducted a conference call with its player reps and executive committee members that painted a grim picture as the labor situation made a turn for the worse.

Then everything changed.

As it turned out, the call, made after seven hours of negotiations at a downtown Minneapolis law firm, came less than halfway through the day's talks. And after those talks finished just before 1 a.m. CT and another set was staged on Friday morning, a different story was emerging.

The owners and players still have much work to do, but major progress was made to fix the revenue split, the overriding issue in the labor battle, on Thursday night and Friday morning. One source said that if smaller pieces connected to it don't shift the numbers too much, it "might not even be a stumbling block going forward."

In addition, the parties took strides to work out disagreements over how to define "all revenue" in the model they plan to use, and they also discarded some terms in the deal the other side found unacceptable.

The countdown concludes with a two-hour special revealing the top 10 on NFL Network on Sunday, July 3 at 8 p.m. ET. Stay tuned for a reaction show right after.

So one set of critical talks now gives way to another. The legal teams for each side will meet in New York on Tuesday and Wednesday, with players and owners returning to the table Thursday and Friday. The format for the week follows the one set for this week's Minneapolis talks.

"We'll continue to meet next week, and our goal is to get a deal done," NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith said on his way out. NFL general counsel Jeff Pash, again citing the gag order, simply said: "We'll be back at it again next week."

U.S. Magistrate Judge Arthur Boylan proved a pivotal figure when things were at their darkest Thursday. Boylan was able to rein the parties in, narrow their focus to what was important on the revenue split, and forge a very productive evening.

This was after issues that arose last week in Massachusetts (over the rookie salary system) and Monday (over what the players perceived as a deception play by owners on the revenue system) resurfaced and again proved explosive, with players and owners re-entering the room after legal teams handled the earlier part of the week.

Things went so well Thursday that Boylan implored the sides to keep going past 1 a.m. The players and owners convinced the judge -- who ran court-ordered mediation in April and May, but has no binding power in these talks -- that they were spent, but the positive momentum continued into Friday morning.

And realistic hope remains that the league will be able to stage the preseason in its natural form, without the cancellation of any games, which would save hundreds of millions of dollars. Internal deadlines to have a deal done in order to save the preseason sit around July 15, and part of the ratcheted-up sense of urgency is the acknowledgement by both sides that a settlement will be exponentially tougher to reach if significant revenue is subtracted from the equation.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell led a group that included Patriots owner Robert Kraft, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, Giants owner John Mara, and Chiefs owner Clark Hunt, with Kraft and Mara the two constants for the owners in the five sets of clandestine meetings.

Smith's team included NFLPA managing director Ira Fishman, outside counsel Jim Quinn, general counsel Richard Berthelsen, Colts center Jeff Saturday, Ravens cornerback Domonique Foxworth, Chiefs guard Brian Waters, and former player Sean Morey. Foxworth, like Kraft and Mara, has been a constant presence at these meetings, which started May 31, over the last five weeks.

The four previous "secret" sessions over the past month took place in suburban Chicago, New York's Long Island, Maryland's Eastern Shore and Massachusetts' South Shore. The Chicago talks, the first in the series, started May 31 and lasted three days, with the Long Island, Eastern Shore and South Shore negotiations going for two days apiece.

The St. Louis Rams and Chicago Bears, this year's Hall of Fame Game participants, are scheduled to open training camp in 21 days, so time is beginning to run short.

The parties have spent the past four weeks largely discussing the revenue split. And it's not just the revenue now, but also how to account for the league's future growth, particularly when the 2014 television deals are done, in the players' take. The idea of an "all revenue" model, which would largely eliminate cost credits to the owners and limit revenue projections, has bridged differences over the course of the discussions.

As for the rookie salary system, the numbers aren't the only issue. Finding a way to replace the market effect those contracts have on veterans as well as getting high draft picks to free agency quicker are among the players' concerns. As it stands, six-year contracts are allowed for high first-round picks making big money.

Goodell was invited to the symposium by Smith, who said he was "thrilled" the commissioner accepted and participated. The men stood side by side after the visit Wednesday morning to Florida.

Goodell and Smith, who arrived in Minneapolis on Monday, took a break from talks Tuesday night to fly together to Sarasota, Fla., and speak to assembled players at the NFLPA's rookie symposium the next morning. They returned to Minneapolis on the same plane.

Goodell was invited to the symposium by Smith, who said he was "thrilled" the commissioner accepted and participated. The men stood side by side after the event Wednesday morning and vowed to continue working on a deal.

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Roethlisberger can't rule out foot surgery despite progress

Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger says the broken right foot that hampered him throughout much of last season has almost fully healed, but there's a chance he'll require surgery if the pain returns, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported Saturday.

"It's doing really good. It's healed up," Roethlisberger said. "Obviously, it helps when I'm not cutting and planting and doing all of these different activities. It's really come a long way. I haven't had too many problems with it recently."

Roethlisberger suffered through much of 2010 with the foot injury, which he aggravated during a game against the Buffalo Bills in November, saying "there were times during practice and games where I didn't feel like I'd be able to walk."

The seven-year veteran and two-time Super Bowl winner wore a cleat fitted with a pair of metal plates both in games and practices, right up through the team's loss to the Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl XLV. He didn't miss a snap last season because of the injury, throwing for 3,200 yards and 17 touchdowns.

"I could have had surgery (after last season), but according to the doctors, it would have been a really nasty process because of where the break was. It was better off trying not to do anything," Roethlisberger said. "It's going to be something where we're just going to have to, in essence, play it by ear. If it continues to be as painful as it was at the end of last year, then I'm going to probably have to have the surgery."

Roethlisberger has been able to focus on football this offseason, free from off-the-field issues that plagued him a year ago. He recently told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that he gathered offensive players for workouts earlier this offseason but kept the proceedings undercover.

"We've worked out, linemen, running backs, tight ends, everybody. All of the offense," Roethlisberger said. "... We've had some good progress, just to kind of refresh people's memories on audible calls or no-huddle calls, little things like that."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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