How important is Alex Smith?

If you want to start a war among Chiefs fans, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better or easier way than by steering the conversation towards Alex Smith.

To some, he’s exactly the quarterback Andy Reid and the rest of the coaching staff say he is – that is, a QB perfectly molded for this offense. To others, he’s everything that’s wrong with the position, and a total disgrace to the Chiefs and the game of football. While it’s not a very common or popular opinion, I’m somewhere closer to the former of those opinions.

Don’t get me wrong – the way he was playing early this season (really the entirety of the season prior to last week’s game) was unacceptably bad. He was getting happy feet in the pocket, refusing to throw the ball deep, not seeing wide open receivers, and (even though it’s pretty much the only thing anybody could call him truly great at doing) he was missing the short and intermediate throws with regularity. He sucked.

And it’s not just over that sample size – there’s a couple weeks a year where I spend pretty much the whole game with my palm and my face becoming all too familiar with each other. I don’t know why, but he seems to forget how to perform the basic functions of his job every once in a while. I want to stress this, because what I’m about to say is sure to sound controversial at best to some of you.

Alex Smith is a championship-level quarterback.