Kansas City Chiefs: What If Scenarios From 2016 Season

The “What Ifs” of 2016

What if Alex Smith ran more?

A lot of times when watching Chiefs games, you would see maybe five or six plays that would make you shake your head and think about Andy Reid’s play calling.

Sometimes, I believe it was just Alex Smith giving up on an offensive play. When Smith would look downfield and see no options, he would dump it off for the next play. Some of these plays had opened up space for him to scramble, and he never took advantage of it.

That’s what had made Smith such a dangerous runner in 2015 was him jumping on those opportunities. Him failing to do so in 2016 hurt the offense for sure.

Now granted Andy Reid is a extremely conservative play caller and when it is third and ten or more he most likely will just call a scrap play. Reid also is not a incompetent coach, and he will leave options open for Smith to look to.

Smith never seemed to realize this. Most of the plays called, Smith would wait and wait for them to develop, and it would end in him getting sacked or dumping off a pass to nowhere.

A viable solution in this situation would be to scramble and at least get some yardage towards offensive movement and break the ice, but this never seemed to happen. Alex Smith last season was a very different quarterback than the year before.

Perhaps Smith didn’t want to run due to suffering those big blows he took in Indianapolis. No one can really blame him for that, but him not running made him a very predictable quarterback for sure.