The Similarities Between Alex Smith And Joe Theismann's Gruesome Injuries Are Like A Twilight Zone Episode

If one were to simply look at their career resumes and statistics, Joe Theismann and Alex Smith are as disparate as you can get as then-Washington Redskins quarterbacks. For starters, Theismann played his entire career in Washington, suiting up for the team now known as the Commanders from 1974 to 1985, mostly in a first-string role. Smith, meanwhile, only joined the Redskins at the tail-end of his career, having previously played for the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs. Theismann, who nearly won the Heisman Trophy while playing for Notre Dame ("Theismann wins Heisman" would have been quite the headline), was a mere fourth-round pick in 1971; Utah product Smith was the first overall selection of the 2005 NFL Draft. Theismann was a star of the boomer generation, while Smith represented the millennial generation of quarterbacks. You get the idea.

Then again, the two signal-callers have some similarities worth mentioning. Theismann and Smith both took a while to catch on; the former spent his first pro years in Canada and later warmed the bench behind veteran Billy Kilmer in Washington before becoming a full-time starter at age 29, the latter had the makings of a draft bust before he broke out with the Chiefs in 2011, his age-27 season. Both were selected to multiple Pro Bowls, and both became football analysts after retiring from the field. But the biggest set of similarities between Smith and Theismann can be found in the devastating late-career injuries they suffered. As you'll find out in a bit, the parallels between both injuries are so many that you'd probably swear you were in the middle of an episode of "Black Mirror" or "The Twilight Zone."

According to Odd Sports Stories, most of the coincidences listed in the NFL Memes Twitter post check out, though there are some in which creative liberties, if you can call them that, were taken. The Twitter post claims Alex Smith and Joe Theismann both went down on the 39-yard line, but the publication clarified that based on film of the game where Theismann got hurt (play-by-play data is only available from 1994 onward), the signal-caller was sacked on Washington's 41. Smith was dropped on the Houston Texans' 37, per the NFL's official play-by-play logs. That's still pretty close in the grand scheme of things, but not at the exact same spot.

A lot of truths were also seemingly stretched in NFL Memes' line about the players who supposedly sacked Theismann and Smith. It's correct that both Lawrence Taylor and J.J. Watt won three Defensive Player of the Year awards, but the New York Giants linebacker was a two-time winner at the time he effectively ended Theismann's career with a sack; he only became a three-time DPOY the next season. Thirty-three years later, it was Kareem Jackson, not Watt, who was credited for the sack when Smith got injured, as Watt was late on the tackle and therefore did not receive any credit.

Furthermore, there are subtle differences in terms of the stadiums at which the games were played; the Theismann injury game was held at the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, while the Smith game took place at FedEx Field, which had replaced the RFK Stadium as the Redskins' home. And while the Redskins beat the Giants in the former contest, the latter game ended in favor of Houston. As such, the "23-21" coincidence is also legit, but it doesn't tell the whole story.