Alex Smith should not be your scapegoat

Is Alex Smith a reasonable scapegoat?

Absolutely not. Yes, Smith has had his issues in some of these games that the Chiefs have struggled in but trying to pin all the blame on any one player or even position at this point is just ridiculous. Especially Smith of all players.

As far as the benching of Alex Smith for Patrick Mahomes goes, just stop. Look, I am a huge supporter of Mahomes before the draft and when I found out that we drafted him I was extremely excited. I even made an argument on whether he or Smith should start this year just based on the last couple seasons with Smith.

I am happy to say that Smith has proven me wrong. He has played his heart out to start off the best season of his career so far. We have seen him take down huge opponents like the New England Patriots in New England on the season opener, take on the right now number one team and come out on top against the Philadelphia Eagles, and he has played like a true MVP for most of the season.

To expect him to not have any bad games is just ignorant. Every quarterback will have bad games. We as Chiefs fans have seen first-hand quarterback legends like Tom Brady and Peyton Manning get benched because of poor performance when playing Kansas City.

The bye week came at a perfect time allowing the Chiefs to take a break away from football and come back with a fresh mind. Take a look at their mistakes and fix them going forward. The season from here on out is one of the easiest in the league as the Chiefs have played most of their hard games in the first nine weeks.

Something that makes it even better is that head coach Andy Reid is excellent coming out of the bye week. Not only in the first game back but the rest of the season as well. I expect Reid to get back to getting Kareem Hunt the ball more often and designing some more creative plays for the offense. I’m sure him and Smith both will be spending time looking at how to beat these cover two zone defenses as well.

Coming into this season I didn’t expect the Chiefs to be 6-3 at the bye week. I think it’s fair to say that most of us didn’t. While there are still things that need fixing for them to make the next step, I am not ready to start panicking and give the rookie quarterback the reins after two bad games.