NFL1000: Can the Chiefs Make a Super Bowl Run with Alex Smith as Their QB?

After their 29-28 win over the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday, the Kansas City Chiefs stand at 9-3 on the season, one game behind the surprising Oakland Raiders in the AFC West and a game ahead of the defending Super Bowl champion Denver Broncos. They’ve won 19 of their last 22 regular-season games, they have one of the league’s better pass-rush units, an above-average defense and an offense that manages to be efficient and productive despite a relative lack of explosive targets.

If the Chiefs are to make to their first Super Bowl in the post-merger era (Super Bowl IV remains their benchmark), quarterback Alex Smith will have to put more on his shoulders. And if you’re even remotely familiar with the NFL over the last decade, the standard narrative says that Smith is incapable of doing so.

Oh, sure, he’s a good quarterback. The first overall pick in the 2005 draft has turned himself into a safe, turnover-averse player with a good sense of the field, a command of a complex system under head coach Andy Reid and a decent enough arm. Where Smith has always come up short is in the kinds of big plays we attribute to the league’s best quarterbacks at any given time.

That narrative is generally correct. During his last years in San Francisco, Smith finally lived up to his potential by adhering strictly to head coach Jim Harbaugh’s offensive edicts—rely on the run game, take what’s open and don’t screw things up for the defense—and helped his 2011 team to within one game of the Super Bowl. The next season, when Smith suffered a midseason concussion, Harbaugh replaced him with Colin Kapernick, and it was Kaepernick’s more obvious affinity for the big play that took the 2012 49ers to Super Bowl XLVII and a close loss to the Ravens.

Smith’s next decision was an easy one—get out of the Bay Area and move to a place better attuned to his strengths and weaknesses. In signing with the Chiefs and Reid in 2013, Smith did just that. Throughout his time in Philadelphia, Reid had a gift for taking physically limited quarterbacks to the peaks of their potential, and it could be argued that he’s done the same thing with Smith. The veteran made the Pro Bowl in his first season with Reid, and through nearly four seasons with the Chiefs, his statistics are above-average: 1,168 completions in 1,813 attempts (a 64.4 completion rate) for 12,631 yards, 72 touchdowns and 24 interceptions.

Spectacular? Not at all. Mercilessly efficient? Absolutely. That’s the player Alex Smith has been for years, and many would tell you that he’s not going to transcend that. In 2016, according to Pro Football Focus’ metrics, he’s attempted just 38 passes over 20 yards in the air, with only 10 completions for 345 yards, one touchdown, one interception and a quarterback rating of 62.7. All of those numbers are in the bottom quarter of stats for starting quarterbacks, and they tell the tale we already know. Smith is a system quarterback who needs to stay inside the box at all times.

Here’s the question that has dogged him for years and tends to plague all similarly limited quarterbacks: Can he do enough to lead his team to a Super Bowl without a historically great defense? The 2000 Ravens, 2002 Buccaneers, 2013 Seahawks and 2015 Broncos each own Lombardi Trophies through the efforts of their defenses as opposed to their quarterbacks, and while Kansas City’s defense is good, there are enough holes in …

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