Alex Smith quietly moving chains at high pace

Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Alex Smith is known as the NFL’s foremost dink-and-dunk quarterback, though the offense is set up so that he can only attempt short passes to try and move the chains. The Chiefs don’t exactly have a true No. 1 receiver, but they do have a few explosive bit players like De’Anthony Thomas to go with incredible talents like Jamaal Charles and Travis Kelce, as well as solid wideout Dwayne Bowe, who is the de facto No. 1. The 2-3 Chiefs haven’t received any big contributions from a pass-catcher save for Kelce, who has 20 receptions and is the only player averaging more than 50 yards per game.

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Smith was solid last year in his first season with the team despite having little around him outside of Charles and Bowe, who wasn’t anything to write home about, and his numbers look very game manger-esque this year. He’s currently averaging a mediocre 6.6 yards per attempt, but he has just four interceptions to eight touchdowns, as well as a quality 63.3% completion percentage.

All of these normal box score statistics show that Smith has been exactly average this season (88.8 QB Rating), because he isn’t turning the ball over or making mistakes, and he’s been decently accurate. These qualities make up for his lack of aggressive throwing (just 10.5 yards per completion), and one key advanced stat shows that he and the Chiefs are trading yardage for first downs.

According to SportingCharts.com, Smith leads the league among all qualifiers (at least 100 pass attempts) in first down percentage, as 69 of his 158 total pass attempts have moved the chains, which is good for a 43.70% clip. That’s superior to Andrew Luck‘s rate of 43.50%, though the difference isn’t going to be statistically significant in the grand scheme of things.

Still, it’s incredibly impressive to see that Smith is at the top of the leaderboard, and he is also, per Advanced Football Analytics, 11th in the league in EPA. His high first down percentage gives us a glimpse of the dink-and-dunk play of Smith and how it yields valuable first downs, which have a certain numeric value in yardage if you run advanced statistical modeling. It would be nice to see him rack up more yards, but the offense is set up so that the deep ball isn’t used. That’s not his game either, and the yardage is largely based on the YAC of his weapons. Smith is indeed a game manager, but he’s a solid one at that, and he’s quietly enjoying a quality year. Is he great? He clearly isn’t, but he doesn’t need to be, and hopefully people praise his decision-making and ability to pick up first downs more often.

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