Is Nick Foles the Best Option at QB for the Surging Kansas City Chiefs?

On Sunday, the Kansas City Chiefs beat the Indianapolis Colts by a score of 30-14, but the narrative around their quarterback situation may end up having more of an impact on their team’s season than their 5-2 start.

Against the Colts, starting quarterback Alex Smith, who has been the team’s primary starter since 2013, had to leave the game twice with concussion-like symptoms. According to BJ Kissel of of the Chiefs’ official website, he had no issue passing the first concussion test but was unable to pass through on his second attempt, which kept him out of the game.

On top of entering the league’s concussion protocol this week, Smith also suffered a lacerated ear, according to ESPN.com’s Adam Schefter. With its top passer out, it was safe to assume that the Kansas City offense was going to stall, considering the depth of the quarterback position in the league, but its backup, Nick Foles, surprised many with his performance, which featured an average of over 10 yards per attempt.

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Early on in training camp, the quarterback unit in Kansas City consisted of Smith, Tyler Bray, a fourth-year project, Aaron Murray, a third-year former fifth-round pick, and Kevin Hogan, a fifth-round rookie. It wasn’t until August that Foles, who was cut by the Los Angeles Rams on this year’s season of Hard Knocks, was even on the Chiefs roster.

Since then, he’s beaten out Bray, who has never thrown a regular-season NFL pass, for the No. 2 spot on the depth chart, and the team let the pairing of Murray and Hogan go, as Andy Reid and Co. must have trusted Foles to take full control of the offense if Smith went down. In his first opportunity at the helm, he passed his exam.

To put his game into perspective, in four years with the Chiefs, Smith has only thrown for an average of 10 yards per attempt three times. And he has only thrown for a passer rating of 135.2, the mark Foles hit against the Colts, three times.

Basically, if you take Smith’s best game in any season he’s played with Kansas City, it looks a lot like what Foles just did on Sunday. In fact, the last time Smith ever had a better passer rating than Foles’ Week 8 effort was in September 2014.

Vertical passing struggles under Smith are nothing new, as Football Outsiders’ Scott Kacsmar noted in his mid-October analysis of his ALEX stat, which calculates how many air yards away a target is relative to the first-down marker.

For as consistent as Roethlisberger and Rodgers are with a high ALEX, the duo of Alex Smith and Blaine Gabbert tend to be the same at the other end. Last year, Smith brought up the rear with the lowest ALEX season on record at minus-3.4. While he is struggling overall as a quarterback this season, Smith is actually just average in ALEX, which has not been the case since 2007. From 2009 to 2015, Smith ranked 30th or lower with a negative ALEX in each season.

Even if you watch the broadcast copy of Kansas City’s offense last week, the difference between the two as vertical passers is obvious. Smith only tested Indianapolis’ defense deep on the team’s first drive.

Here is the placement on Alex Smith’s two deep throws during KC’s first drive today. pic.twitter.com/a3PqjdRswC

— Bad Hombre (@JuMosq) October 31, 2016

He threw one pass that went out of bounds. He threw one pass that was tipped by a Colts defender. It was a typical “Alex Smith game,” which featured him targeting a receiver three yards past the line of …

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