No, the Chiefs haven’t hired Alex Smith as quarterback coach

These days, you can’t take anything at face value. Earlier on Monday, fake news broke (feels weird typing that) with a lie that the Kansas City Chiefs had hired former quarterback Alex Smith as their new quarterbacks coach. It came in the form of one of those sharable fancy memes, and social media did what it does best and spread it everywhere.

The downside here is that it wasn’t true at all.

https://twitter.com/footenoted/status/1630235567517515778

No, the Chiefs have not hired Alex Smith—at least not yet. Is this within the realm of possibility? We suppose. But at this point, it doesn’t matter.

Of course, what makes a fake meme like this so dangerous is that the very idea of Smith taking on that role is already such a popular idea that everyone wants to believe it. Smith remains a beloved figure to Chiefs Kingdom for the role he played in helping to right a ship that had sunk like the Titanic in 2012. Not only that, but Smith has already served as an important mentor for Patrick Mahomes during his first year in the league, so the relationship itself is not far-fetched.

Smith earned even more goodwill by exhibiting such tremendous leadership in the way he handled the passing of the torch and the eventual trade that took him to the nation’s capital. From there, his gruesome leg injury and heroic comeback catapulted him to some legendary status where he remains to this day.

We’d all love to see Smith back at Arrowhead in some capacity and maybe there’s a coaching future ahead of him. But for now, make sure to check Snopes (or Arrowhead Addict) when you see a meme that breaks news for you rather than an actual news source.