I want you to take a step back for a minute and imagine your team acquiring Matt Ryan after his 2016 MVP season in exchange for Patrick Robinson. Who? I can promise you that most casual fans do not know who Patrick Robinson is. Well, he’s about to play in the Super Bowl, but that doesn’t matter in this equation. He’s a slot cornerback for the Philadelphia Eagles. He also happens to be PFF’s No. 1 ranked slot cornerback in 2017. Again, you don’t care because your team just acquired Matt Ryan, a franchise quarterback at the most important position in sports. Alex Smith played MVP-caliber football in 2017. The Redskins just traded PFF’s No. 2 slot cornerback Kendall Fuller and a third-round draft pick for Smith. Some are really peeved about Fuller, and though he made strides as a really good slot cornerback in 2017, don’t forget that he was benched at the end of 2016 for poor play. To get something, you have to give something, and the Browns were reportedly willing to offer a second-round pick for Smith.
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The money that quarterbacks get continues to go up, so I wouldn’t look too far into what was paid to Smith. It’s likely a three-year extension that’s fully guaranteed with a team option for the fourth, and final year. If my assessment is correct, they would have him locked up through his age-38 season, which is usually about the time quarterbacks start eyeing retirement. We won’t know the details of the contract until the new league year, because as of right now, there is not an official contract. What we do know is that the Redskins team just shifted in another direction, and we need to find out what it means for fantasy purposes.
There’ll be some fantasy pundits out there who claim Smith is a game-manager and that he’s a check-down machine, and that he benefitted from having Tyreek Hill, Travis Kelce, and Kareem Hunt. Well, let’s be clear about something – he didn’t have Hill in the lineup until mid-way through the 2016 season, and he didn’t have Hunt until the 2017 season. Since coming to the Chiefs in 2013, Smith has thrown 102 touchdown passes to just 33 interceptions. He’s now posted a 2.9:1 or higher touchdown to interception ratio in five of his last seven seasons. Shall we go through his No. 1 options at wide receiver? Dwayne Bowe from 2013-2014, Jeremy Maclin from 2015-2016, and then Hill in 2017. Ideally, none of them are No. 1 options in a top passing attack, yet Smith was able to post one of the best touchdown to interception ratios in all of football. In fact, there’s just two quarterbacks over the last five years to post a better touchdown to interception rate than Smith: Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady. That’s it.
Over the last four years, Smith has boasted a 66.3 completion percentage, which ranks as the fourth-best in that time among quarterbacks with at least 1,200 pass attempts. Those in front of him? Drew Brees, Matt Ryan, and Kirk Cousins. “But Mike, he checks down a lot, of course his accuracy percentage is high!” Did you know that Smith led the league in deep passing yards in 2017 (by almost 200 yards) and that he had the highest QB Rating on passes that traveled over 20 yards (almost 20 points higher than the next closest quarterback)? Does this automatically mean that Smith is the best deep-thrower in the league? No, but what it does show is that he’s capable of making the throws when asked to.
The knock on Smith over the years is that he’s too conservative and that he doesn’t take enough deep shots. Well, when your team is throwing the ball 450 to 500 times per season, do you really think they’re going to be run-heavy and then allow their quarterback to take deep shots whenever he feels it necessary, without a true No. 1 wide receiver? C’mon, guys. It was a team built on sustaining long drives, taking care of the football, and playing top-notch defense. The Chiefs defense took a big step back in 2017, and wouldn’t have been a playoff team without Smith stepping up to make up for their lackluster performances. And let’s not forget about Hunt, who disappeared during the middle of the season. He had 609 rushing yards in Weeks 1-5, but then just 321 rushing yards from Week 6-13. I know what you’re going to say, the coaching and play-calling was awful, they didn’t give him enough carries. Right? So why are you so quick to turn on Smith when it was the coaching and play-calling that asked him to protect the ball? He did everything he was supposed to, and did it extremely well.
Going over to Jay Gruden’s offense, it’s very unlikely he’ll have those same reigns, as no Gruden-led offense has ever finished outside the top-20 in pass attempts, and that includes his time as a coordinator. Since Andy Reid and Smith joined forces in 2013, here’s a look at the Chiefs ranks in passing attempts: 20, 28, 29, 25, 17. Want to know something interesting? In the two seasons where they finished top-20 in pass attempts (2013 and 2017), Smith set career-highs in touchdowns (23 in 2013, 26 in 2017). So, when someone tells you that Smith has only thrown 20-plus touchdowns in three of his seasons, just laugh and ask them if they’ve looked at his passing attempts. His career-high is 508 pass attempts, set in 2017, his career-year that should’ve landed him in the MVP conversation.
Returning to the debate about “Oh, the receivers made him who he was in 2017,” how about we talk about the quarterback that used to occupy the starting quarterback spot on the Redskins? Do you mean to tell me that Pierre Garcon, DeSean Jackson, Jamison Crowder, and Jordan Reed didn’t make any contributions to Kirk Cousins‘ success? Did you know that Cousins’ accuracy percentage, touchdown to interception ratio, and QB Rating have all dipped consistently in each of the last two seasons? Cousins has never thrown the ball fewer than 540 times while starting for the Redskins, including 606 attempts in 2016, so you should be able to understand why it’s been easier for him to post better fantasy numbers than Smith. I’m not saying Cousins is a bad quarterback, he’s not; but pretending that he was going to be back in a Redskins uniform was never going to happen, so the Redskins had to look elsewhere.
While we didn’t see Josh Doctson “break-out” in 2017, we did see him take steps in the right direction, and he was drafted in the first-round to eventually become a No. 1 wide receiver. While that remains to be seen, we’ve seen glimpses of his potential. Crowder is a rock-solid slot receiver who should serve as a safety valve for Smith, while Reed simply needs to get onto the field, because we know about his ability. After seeing the Redskins go out and try to acquire a bigger free agent target last year (Terrelle Pryor), it wouldn’t shock me if they tried to snag someone in free agency or the draft to play opposite of Doctson on the perimeter. Chris Thompson also flashed last year as a player who can do a lot in the passing game, providing another solid option for Smith. We can’t pretend that the Redskins offensive line doesn’t have concerns, but they do have a solid anchor in Trent Williams at left tackle, and a solid right guard in Brandon Scherff, so they can build off those foundation players.
Bottom line, Smith is much better than you think. Believe me, I was someone who doubted his ability to carry an offense during his time with the 49ers, and even during the beginning of his time with the Chiefs. But if you haven’t sat down and watched Smith’s game film in 2017, I highly suggest doing so, because I promise you’ll walk away as a huge fan. Is Smith a quarterback you’d compare to Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers? No, but you aren’t landing a quarterback like that no matter how much you give up in a trade. What he is, is a quarterback who can lead a franchise to the playoffs, and yes, he’s good enough to win a Super Bowl. As for fantasy, he’ll likely be under-drafted in 2018 because of the game-manager mentality that most have about him. We’ll re-visit this when we know what’s happened throughout the offseason, but as of now, Smith should be considered a borderline QB1.
Mike Tagliere is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Mike, check out his archive and follow him @MikeTagliereNFL.
