The Mystery of Alex Smith and the Chiefs

WHY ALEX SMITH INSTANTLY MAKES THE CHIEFS A CONTENDER

Measuring the entire season, no one got less from the QB position than the Chiefs last year. Make no mistake, the Chiefs didn’t ALWAYS give high support to their QBs. They had the 11^th lowest QB Support numbers in the league, but Cassell and Quinn added their own unique blend of ineptitude ensuring the Chiefs lost games with both high and low QB support numbers, helping the Chiefs nail down the No. 1 pick in the 2013 draft.  

But now the Chiefs will have veteran QB Alex Smith, the guy with the third highest passer rating from 2012. This, along with new head coach Andy Reid makes them instant contenders, right? Espn thinks so, predicting a 2013 playoff berth. Using TAVA, Smith ranks 11^th (out of 38 ranked QBs) and is certainly above average. In a number of losses, the Chiefs didn’t need stellar QB play, just average, and Smith’s number’s, whether it’s QBR, passer rating, or TAVA all suggest he is, at minimum, above average.  

I ran back through last year, and taking a QB with Smith's TAVA score and inserting him in instead of Casell or Quinn resulted in an expected record of about 7-9 or 8-8. Now, that's not playoff bound, but it's a huge improvement, and the Chiefs also are likely to improve from better coaching as well. There are plenty of reasons for Chiefs fans to be excited about the arrival of Alex Smith and the upcoming 2013 season.

WHY MAYBE HE DOESN’T

But there are concerns. First, as good (or at least average-ish) as Alex Smith’s performance over the last two seasons has been, it’s a relatively recent phenomenon. Before the arrival of head coach/QB Whisperer Jim Harbaugh, Smith was decidedly below average. Here are his estimated* TAVA scores for the last few years as well as where they would rank in the 2012 season.

YEAR	TAVA	TAVA RANK
2009	-0.42	30/38
2010	-0.45	30/38
2011	-0.04	21/38
2012	0.29	11/38

And looking back at just the 2011 and 2012 seasons (i.e. the good years), here’s Smith’s regular season record across different support levels.

QB Support	Prob. Of Victory	Wins	Losses	TAVA
Below 0.9	0-9%	0	0
0.9 to 1.69	10-20%	0	0
1.70 to 2.7	21-40%	0	3	-1.22
2.71 to 3.59	40-60%	3	1	1.17
3.6 to 4.59	61-80%	4	0	0.35
4.6-5.39	81-90%	3	1	-0.67
5.4+	90+%	9	0	0.30
TOTALS		19	5	0.13

Smith excelled when the 49ers were rolling, but not so much when the team needed an extra special performance at the QB position. He also didn’t play in any really low QB Support games (Support below 1.7). The Chiefs, for example, had six such games last year. Spoiler alert: the 49ers are in fact an all around better team than the Chiefs. Yes, Smith has a nice QBR and a 19-5 record, but 12 of those wins are in games almost any good QB should be winning.

DÉJÀ VU ALL OVER AGAIN

And here’s the second concern: I know another QB who had above average QBR and TAVA scores on another team, a QB the Chiefs could have had without giving up any draft picks. The only difference is that his last above average season wasn’t 2012 with the 49ers, it was 2008 with the New England Patriots. Yes, I’m talking about Matt Cassell. Cassell had an estimated* TAVA score in 2008 that would have been the 8^th best of the year if produced in 2012. He was 11^th in QBR, and he looked very much the part for potential savior of the Chiefs.

So what happened? Well, the two biggest factors that QB Support does NOT control for are (1) quality of coaching/system and (2) quality of WRs. Cassell had not just a great system in New England, but Wes Welker and (a still dominant and well-behaved) Randy Moss as his two primary targets. When taken out of that environment, Cassell never produced even close to similar results. His estimated TAVA scores for the following years would have ranked 36^th, 24^th, 31^st, and 36^th in 2012. Not exactly top ten material.

STILL NO ANSWERS

So the question is this: is Alex Smith Matt Cassell 2.0, the underrated back-up to an elite (or potentially elite) QB, the guy for whom they trade a 2^nd round pick, the guy who put up good numbers in a great system, and the guy who will fail to deliver similar results in KC? Or is this an entirely different situation. Is this about a No. 1 pick, a guy with superior talent who just never had the right environment, a guy who’s going from one great offensive mind (Harbaugh) to another (Reid), a guy who makes the Chiefs instant contenders?

The numbers here show their limits, and the more you dig, the murkier things start to get. Alex Smith ALMOST certainly makes the Chiefs better, how much better though we’ll have to wait and see.

NOTE ABOUT ESTIMATED* TAVA SCORES: The proper way to calculate a TAVA score is to compare a QB’s results to the other QBs from the same season. Because I don’t have the past five seasons worked out, I estimated Smith’s and Cassell’s past TAVA scores by using the 512 QB performances from the 2012 season as a reference.