SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Some players make their team during minicamp. In June, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Alex Smith used minicamp to make his team his.

In lieu of official team activities during the lockout, Smith organized practice sessions. He reserved a field at San Jose State, gathered teammates from around the country, structured workouts, even quizzed his teammates to see how well they were absorbing the playbook — which he had learned during an intense day of meetings at the team’s training center when the lockout was briefly lifted in April. He was, simultaneously, the coach, quarterback and traveling secretary.

“It had to be me,” he said, as the only guy on the team at that point with any understanding of the system the 49ers’ first-year coach, Jim Harbaugh, planned to run. “So I did it.”

It was a level of leadership Smith had not before shown, and he did it all as a free agent, without being under contract.