SANTA CLARA, Calif. — The San Francisco 49ers placed quarterback Alex Smith on injured reserve Wednesday, ending the quarterback's season and drawing sympathy from the head coach. The Seahawks' head coach, that is.

"It's a tough situation for the player," Mike Holmgren said in a conference call. "I think Alex coming out of college — there was a lot of hope. Clearly, there still is a lot of hope and a lot of potential. He was injured and for a quarterback to hurt his throwing shoulder, that's hard. That is really hard."

Smith's own coach, meanwhile, didn't want to talk about the situation.

"Nope," Mike Nolan said when asked whether he knew Smith's diagnosis. "All I need to know is if he'll be back on this football team so that I can make the adjustments to our roster. So I don't have any specifics for you other than that."

According to other sources, Smith has a fractured coracoid process, a bone in the shoulder that is typically only broken when there is severe trauma. Smith has said that surgery — and the insertion of a pin — is an option. However, doctors will wait to see how well the fracture heals on its own before deciding on surgery.

No one is certain how the injury occurred. Smith has said he felt a sharp pain after throwing a deep pass late in Friday's practice. Merely throwing a football, however, could not have caused the break. Smith's doctors speculate that the suture used to correct last year's shoulder separation may have weakened the area.

Smith was not available for comment Wednesday.

Whether Smith has surgery or not, there is a good chance the former No. 1 overall pick has played his final game for the 49ers.

Last week, general manager Scot McCloughan acknowledged that if Smith, 24, is not a starter at year's end it will be very difficult to justify keeping him and his nearly $10 million base salary in 2009.

Nolan refused to entertain that notion.

"I'm just going to tell you really clearly that I'm not going to answer any questions about where it's going in the future," he said during his Wednesday press conference. "We'll cross that bridge when we get there. My focus right now is on Seattle. If you want to talk about Seattle, let's do it. Otherwise I'm pretty much done."

As of late Wednesday morning, only one of Smith's teammates — fellow quarterback Shaun Hill, who had spoken with Smith — had heard that Smith was finished for the season.

"IR?," running back Frank Gore responded. "This is my first time hearing it. I'm sorry to hear that. ... I wish the best for him. I hope he gets well."

Said quarterback J.T. O'Sullivan: "I don't ... I honestly don't know what the situation is right now. You guys probably know more than I do."

If Smith never again suits up in a 49ers' uniform, his last game for San Francisco will have had come in Seattle, where the 49ers play Sunday. That Nov. 12 game was the third in which Smith tried to play with a badly separated shoulder and was perhaps the low point of his career.

He struggled throughout the game, connecting on only 12 of 28 attempts as the 49ers were shut out on national television. Later that week he told reporters that his shoulder had been killing him, an admission that set off several tense weeks between Nolan and the quarterback.

Ironically, the person who seemed to stick up for Smith the most at that time was Seattle linebacker Julian Peterson, a teammate of Smith's in 2005. At the time Peterson said that Smith didn't look like himself. He expanded on that during a Wednesday conference call.

"I thought he wasn't ready to go," Peterson said. "I thought it was still kind of banged up. I thought he just tried to tough it out and it really wasn't a smart move for the team and for himself."

Asked if he had heard that Smith had been placed on injured reserve, Peterson said he had.

"Yes, I just found that out now," he said. "I think a lot of it had to do with last year — him trying to still play through it. I think it kind of piled up on him."