Alex Smith’s last chance to make a legacy with the Chiefs slipped through his fingers

In five seasons as the starter for the Kansas City Chiefs, Alex Smith has led the team to a 50-26 record with trips to the postseason in four of those five years. He’s thrown 102 touchdown passes with just 33 interceptions, and his 94.8 passer rating since 2013 is top 10 in the NFL over that span.

Statistically, Smith’s time in Kansas City has been a success. But what do the Chiefs have to show for it?

Nada.

The first three trips to the playoffs in the Andy Reid-Alex Smith era all ended with little more than a whimper from the Chiefs. Two were one-and-done with Kansas City losing a 45-44 shootout to the Indianapolis Colts in the Wild Card Round in 2013 and 18-16 to the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Divisional Round after a first-round bye a year ago.

The only win was a 30-0 domination of the Brian Hoyer-led Houston Texans two years ago that was followed by a 27-20 defeat at the hands of the New England Patriots a week later.

A fourth trip to the playoffs finished as fruitless as the first three. On Saturday, the Chiefs blew a 21-3 lead at halftime to lose to the Titans, 22-21, and it means Smith’s time with the Chiefs — which is probably coming to its end in the 2018 offseason — will be remembered for what it didn’t accomplish rather than what it did.

When the Chiefs acquired Smith from the San Francisco 49ers for second-round picks in the 2013 and 2014 NFL drafts, it came with a four-year contract extension after his first year in Kansas City.

The deal isn’t set to expire until the 2019 offseason, but it will cost the Chiefs a $20.6 million cap hit in 2018. Kansas City has the option to avoid that hit and save $17 million by releasing Smith in the offseason before March 16 when a $2 million roster bonus is set to kick in.

The Chiefs are reportedly open to the idea of trading Smith, according to NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport, but even releasing the quarterback doesn’t seem too outrageous.

With his 34th birthday coming in May, the logical move for the Chiefs is to move on from Smith — especially when the team has so much reason to be optimistic about his replacement.

The Chiefs traded up to pick Patrick Mahomes with the 10th selection in the 2018 NFL draft, and he immediately showed off his huge potential in preseason. With the AFC West clinched and nothing to play for in Week 17, Kansas City gave Mahomes his first regular-season start and he kept the hype train rolling by leading the Chiefs to a come-from-behind victory, even if he finished with an interception and no touchdowns.

Mahomes is the future, and there’s little reason why it shouldn’t begin in 2018. Perhaps the only scenario where Smith could’ve been back with the Chiefs for another season as the starter was if he was able to lead the team to its first Super Bowl victory since 1970.

That didn’t come to fruition with the Chiefs again failing to get off the launch pad in the postseason.

Roller coaster seasons rarely come as clean as the Chiefs’ was in 2017. Every team has its ups and downs, but Kansas City had three distinct chapters during its 10-6 campaign.

It’s hardly even a year you can call inconsistent. They were consistently excellent until they were consistently terrible, and then the Chiefs were consistently great again.

Kansas City hit the playoffs more than a month removed from its last loss.

Smith started the year with a 132.7 passer rating in September and a 107.0 rating in October before it dropped to 79.1 in the Chiefs’ 0-3 November. It bounced back to 105.1 in the final month of the year, and he finished the season with just five interceptions — four of which came in that winless November.

If Kansas City was able to hold court at home with a win against the Tennessee Titans on Saturday, the next stop was likely a trip to Foxborough to play the New England Patriots. But the Chiefs couldn’t even get there after losing at Arrowhead Stadium to the Titans.

While the Chiefs won a game at Gillette Stadium in Week 1, that feels like forever ago. Back then, Kansas City had Eric Berry — before an Achilles tear late in the game ended his year — to help slow down Rob Gronkowski. And the Chiefs offense torched a Patriots defense that gave up more than 400 yards in each of the first six games but just once in the next 10.

Beating the Patriots or traveling to Pittsburgh to beat a Steelers team that finished the year No. 3 in total offense and No. 5 in total defense would’ve been daunting. It was a chance for a defining moment for Smith’s career and the Chiefs under Reid, but 2017 will instead be remembered as another wasted year for a franchise that got stuck for years being the third- or fourth-best team in the conference.

It feels dramatic to pin a player’s reputation on a single game, but Smith’s story is nearly written. He was the No. 1 pick in the NFL draft 13 years ago and for almost every other player, there isn’t a chance at this point in a career to rewrite things.

For Smith, that story is of a player who has been able to lead teams to the playoffs with efficient, mistake-free football but never any further. His only trip to the Super Bowl came as a backup to Colin Kaepernick in 2012 after Smith led the 49ers to a 6-2-1 record in nine starts in the regular season.

It hasn’t changed in Kansas City where he’s done enough to get the Chiefs to the postseason but never over the hump.

There will be another stop in Smith’s future. Plenty of teams are in need of bridge quarterbacks, and he’ll be as solid of an option as you can find on the market if the Chiefs do decide to part ways in the offseason. But the 2018 postseason may have been his last chance to shake the notion that he can’t lead a team to anything more than a good regular-season record.