What should we expect from Alex Smith this season?

When John Harbaugh arrived as the head coach in San Francisco one of the first things he did was draft a quarterback in Colin Kaepernick. Alex Smith was the incumbent but Harbaugh had no ties to him. Smith proceeded to start the entire 2011 season and the first nine games of 2012 until a concussion put Smith on the sideline and Kaepernick took over as the starter and essentially ended Smith’s tenure with the 49ers.

While Alex Smith may not have been seen as a premier quarterback in those seasons playing in front of Kaepernick his numbers did take a HUGE step forward compared to his previous numbers. Look at the splits.

Smith 2005-2010: 57.1% completion rate, 6.2 yards/attempt, 51 TDs, 53 INTs
Smith 2011-2012: 64.3% completion rate, 7.4 yards/attempt, 30 TDs, 10 INTs

Now, I am certainly not saying there was a direct correlation between Kaepernick arriving in San Francisco and Smith’s play drastically improving. Smith finally being able to play 100% healthy and having an offensive minded coach like Harbaugh were obviously big contributing factors. That having been said, there simply is no valid argument based on his history that one could make saying that Smith is going to crumble under the pressure of having Mahomes behind him. The only other time in his career he had a talented young quarterback behind him that he was trying to hold off he played the best he had ever played up to that point in his NFL career.

So should we expect that to happen again this season in Kansas City?