Frustrating loss caps solid, but unsatisfying, season for Chiefs’ Alex Smith

Alex Smith stepped to the podium on Sunday evening, the disappointment clear on his face.

Smith, the Chiefs’ starting quarterback, had just absorbed another divisional-round defeat for the second year in a row, an 18-16 home loss to Pittsburgh in which he completed 20 of 34 passes for 172 yards with a touchdown and an interception.

Smith’s passer rating of 69.7 was the lowest of the season, and it was not helped by at least three unacceptable drops by his receivers, more than a few plays in which he was pressured and a handful of missed downfield shots that were on him.

In all, the Chiefs were outgained by the Steelers 389-227, and it clearly frustrated him.

“Big, big opportunity for us — we knew what we were capable of,” said Smith, who guided the Chiefs to a 12-4 record and their first AFC West title since 2010. “Certainly, offensively, we didn’t hold up our end tonight. Didn’t get it done. I thought we had a chance to come back there, and obviously, put it into overtime or a shot, and we came up short.”

Entering the game, Smith knew that this is the time of year when quarterbacks are judged. He’d hoped to show people what he’s all about and prove he’s a Super Bowl-caliber quarterback. Instead, he lost to Ben Roethlisberger, a two-time Super Bowl winner, just one year after losing to Tom Brady, a four-time Super Bowl winner, in the same round.

And like the rest of the Chiefs, the 32-year old Smith is searching for answers.

“Obviously, last year, we talked about if you could get home-field advantage what an advantage that is, and we had it this year,” Smith said. “Like I said, we had our opportunities. Regardless of what happened at the end of the game, we had our opportunities. So, you have to figure out a way to take the next step, figure out a way to get past that.”

Smith was referring to the holding call on Eric Fisher, which negated a terrific two-point conversion throw to Demetrius Harris that would have the tied the game at 18-18. Several players spent the postgame defending Fisher, like all good teammates do, and they had a point; not only was the timing of the call — or even the call itself — a bit dubious, but there were also dozens of mistakes the Chiefs made over the course of the contest that added up to an extremely bitter loss.

“I felt like everybody kind of had a part in it,” Smith explained. “Just off the top of my head — everybody — myself, the guys up front, the guys outside. Everybody had a turn. Against a team like that, a defense like that, they make you defend a lot. They give you a ton of different looks. I felt like we were here and there and missing plays. So, yeah, it hurt us.”

But just like the quarterback gets most of the praise when things go well (like the San Diego and Denver wins), he also gets most of the blame when things go wrong (like the Tennessee and Tampa Bay losses).

Great quarterbacks — such as Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees, etc. — often make their teammates better by lifting them through individual play. For better or worse, that didn’t happen for Smith on Sunday, though his playoff stat line entering the contest — he’d completed 112 of 186 passes (60.2 percent) for 1,309 yards and 11 touchdowns and only one interception in five games — was outstanding.

“Are there plays that we probably would like to have back? Yeah, there’s some plays he’d like to have back,” said Chiefs coach Andy Reid, who also noted that Smith battled and stayed tough throughout the course of the game. “Did he do some good things? Yeah, he did some real good things.”

Does that mean Smith, who completed 67.1 percent of his passes with 20 total touchdowns and eight interceptions this season, is going to be Reid’s quarterback in 2017?

“You always get asked, is your staff going to be together, are players going to be here a day after a game like this … come on,” Reid said. “I am probably like you are — I was here till 2 in the morning going back through the tape and looking at it and here I am. All that stuff, that’s the last thing on my mind right now.”

But when asked to consider the remaining four quarterbacks in the playoffs — Brady, Rodgers, Roethlisberger and Matt Ryan, all elite performers — and what that might reveal about what you need to make it to the conference championship, Reid understood.

“I still think we can win with Alex — we were right there,” Reid said. “He made a phenomenal throw on the two-point play to put us into position to take care of business. This wasn’t all about Alex. That’s not what this was — or with his performance and what it came down to. That’s how I feel.”

The thing is, you could make an argument that it would be smart for the Chiefs to start grooming Smith’s successor, even if they had won the Super Bowl this year. Smith’s backups, for now, include Nick Foles — who won his only start of the year for the Chiefs but has a $10.75 million option — and rifle-armed Tyler Bray, who’s been developing for four years but still has much to prove.

Smith, a 12-year veteran, is under contract through the 2018 season — he has a cap number of $16.9 million in 2017 — and has been a steady winner in four years with the Chiefs, compiling an impressive 41-20 regular-season record. The Chiefs could create $9.7 million by releasing him, but that’s chump change in NFL money, and if the team is trying to win it all in 2017, it seems highly unlikely they can find a better option than a QB entering his fifth season in Reid’s system who has won 68 percent of his starts under Reid.

But even Joe Montana had to compete with Steve Young at Smith’s age, just like Brett Favre had to compete with Rodgers, and smart clubs always try to stay ahead of the quarterback curve. There was some scuttle about the Chiefs’ interest in Paxton Lynch in the first round of last year’s draft — Lynch’s agent, Leigh Steinberg, even confirmed it — and if taking a quarterback with a first-round pick was an option then, it could certainly be one now.

All that, however, is yet to be determined. As Reid said, Sunday’s loss was too fresh. For him. His coaches. His players. Everyone … including his quarterback.

“Yeah, I think everybody is running through their head on what they could have done differently? What could I have done in the week? What could I have done tonight? What if I’d just done this? That’s just the nature of losing — you’re going to do that,” Smith said. “It’s going to play some mind games with you.

“I think, obviously when you get away from it for a little — you get removed — you have to set your sights on, what do we need to do moving forward. There’s a whole process there — offseason and all the stuff that comes with that. How do we take the next step?”

This story was originally published January 16, 2017 at 8:34 PM with the headline "Frustrating loss caps solid, but unsatisfying, season for Chiefs’ Alex Smith."