I hope Alex Smith takes a big step forward and has his best season.

I fear he will be the same old Alex Smith - up-and-down. Alternating between teasing the ability to make that leap, and frustrating with his unwillingness to slide in the pocket or consistently challenge the intermediate and deep zones of the defense.

Shit or get off the pot. Nice article.

he seperated his shoulder and had to have surgery. once he recovered he went back in but was playing in pain. nolan publicly called him a pussy and benched him. come to find out the surgen somehow left a wire in there that sawed back through the bone while he was trying to play. another surgery was needed and alex lost some zip on his ball. on a side note...is it me or is this server lag out alot?

Yeah, that is nice.... guess what? Good QB's make that pass at least once a game... not 1 highlight per season.

We scored 14 points in that game...but good on Alex for that pass.

Mellinger is right.

It's shit or get off the pot time for Smith. If this isn't an 11+ win football team this year, then they need to seriously look at the draft for the possibility of an escape plan in 2017 (and really, he could have a good season and it is still a good idea to look at a succession plan for when they need to pay for Poe and Kelce).

They could even consider trading Smith in 2016 if the right deal came along but if they're looking to move him, it stands to reason his season wasn't one that would serve to create much trade value for him. Ultimately the acceleration of his signing bonus onto our cap would hurt, but not be crippling. However, his salary for 2016 is guaranteed so the only way to move on would be by trade, taking us off the hook for the guaranteed salary.

That said, I still think he has a career year.

So 11+ wins and he gets to stay? Sounds kind of unfair don't you think? However I could definitely see them win that many games. Considering what we've seen from the past from this team, they are only getting better and better. Being a 9-7 team last year wth what they had to go through only strengthens my optimism for this year. 11-5 sounds bout right to me. Don't think I have ever seen the Chiefs have a complete team like this

Agree with everything here.

My position on Alex Smith has always been clear - he makes your team exactly as good as it is.

He's not Aaron Rodgers, who makes it better. He's not Matt Cassel, who makes it worse.

If you took the Chiefs and every other team in the league, subtracted the quarterbacks and were asked to rank order them, is there any argument at all that the Chiefs are at least a top 5 team by that metric? I don't think so - the talent on this team is immense.

You're right, I could be being unfair, but my general perception of the NFL 'bell curve' is that every year there 4-5 teams that win 12+ games and another 2-3 that win 11.

So if I'm right and Alex Smith truly is a guy who makes your team exactly as good as it is and I believe that the Chiefs are a top 5 team quarterback excluded, then 11 wins should be a fair expectation.

By season's end it's possible he could have played well and we end up at 10 wins; I'd still deal with that. But anything less has to be seen as an unqualified failure for Alex Smith and a definite sign that he's not a quarterback that can take this team anywhere meaningful.

I'm not throwing stones, I legitimately want to know because I respect your opinion, but where are you at on injuries?

Jamaal Charles, Justin Houston, a myriad of other dudes missing serious time changes the equation significantly. Worst case scenario, Charles goes down, misses 8 games, and the narrative is that Alex didn't have his best weapon. Where does your evaluation of him stand then?

On the other side, is 11+ wins always good enough? It depends on what you define as a good season. Alex haters are going to be ridiculously unreasonable. Alex homers are going to be ridiculously apologetic.

I don't care about winning games if they're done the wrong way. Last 2 years are funny examples. In 2013, we won 9 games despite Alex (easy schedule, defense bailed him out most games) yet went 2-5 in games where Alex played some of the best football in his Chiefs' career but the D laid a big goose egg. In 2014, he was a huge reason for the Chiefs going 7-1 during their hot streak, but was also a huge reason for the Chiefs going 1-5 the other miserable stretch.

My criteria for Alex has always been simple... if you're going to manage games, you better convert third downs and close games. If you open up the offense, you have a lot more leniency on those 2 points.

There's no wrong way to win games. Just win.

If that was the case, Denver would be trotting out Tim Tebow on Sunday, and The Patriots would have let Brady walk in 2008 when they won all those games with Matt Cassel.

If the winning isn't sustainable, then it's the wrong way to win. 2013 was a great example of that. The defense put up an all-world performance and then stopped doing it. Alex Smith then became a different QB.

The question I keep asking is, why does Alex wait or his defense to suck to step up as a QB? If we're treating this as a "put up or shut up" year for Alex, I don't consider it success if we're winning too many games the wrong way. That is, games where we shit the bed on third downs and in a close game, our offense keeps going 3 and out in the 4th quarter and relies on our defense to make stop after stop. Even if we win games that way, that doesn't make me at all confident that Smith is the right QB.

3400 yards, 23 TDs and 11 picks