Kansas City Chiefs willing to franchise tag Alex Smith

Yesterday we talked about Kansas City Chiefs GM John Dorsey’s willingness to show patience in contract negotiations for Alex Smith’s services. Today Ian Rapoport of NFL.com tweeted the following:

Can you imagine if the Chiefs seriously franchise tagged Alex Smith? I’m all for having Alex Smith on the Chiefs. He’s a good player for that team because he doesn’t give a game away and the KC defense is stingy enough to keep games close. But if you’re going to keep your defense stingy with low first round picks, etc, then you need the cap space that comes with not having a Super Bowl-caliber quarterback.

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This of course will all depend on Alex Smith’s 2014 season. If the Chiefs can repeat or even exceed their success from last year and see Smith run the offense the way he did last year, he’ll definitely a warrant contract in the $10-15M/year. Not in the average of the best five or ten players at that position. Alex Smith is not one of the five or ten best quarterbacks in the league and shouldn’t get paid like that for one second, let alone a whole year.

Of course, anything can happen. A year after the Ravens stalled in talks with Joe Flacco, the guy went on basically a perfect playoff run in his contract year. Alex Smith isn’t at that level, but he did basically have a playoff game won until the defense ran out of gas. The Chiefs are hoping they can catch a little bit of that magic in 2014 with Alex Smith. I’m sure they’ll be happy to pay whatever by then.