I think you have to be worried about Alex Smith. Much harder schedule, for starters. Last year Kansas City played one of the easiest schedules, this year it will play one of the hardest. The NFC East was filled with problem teams last year; it gets replaced by the NFC West (Seattle, San Francisco, Arizona and the cross-state Rams). And the AFC South was garbage last year; those four games get replaced by the AFC East. Not as big of a shift, but harder.
More troubling, though, is the offensive line. Kansas City lost left tackle Branden Albert; he signed with Miami. And two guards also signed with other teams, Geoff Schwartz and Jon Asamoah; those guys shared a starting spot last year.
Lesser blocking means Alex Smith will be under pressure more often, and he’s a guy who’s shown that he’ll tend to eat the ball and take sacks when things start breaking down. Not so much last year, but Smith was about the most-sacked quarterback (per pass play) in his last two years in San Francisco.
In the last three years, 25 quarterbacks have been on the field for at least 1,000 pass plays. Alex Smith is the most sacked of all of those guys, going down on over 8 percent of those plays.
Not that taking sacks is always a bad thing. Better to take a sack, after all, then force a pass that’s intercepted. Ryan Fitzpatrick and Josh Freeman are among the quarterbacks who’ve been sacked on less than 5 percent of their pass plays, and everybody agrees that Smith is better than both of those guys.
But just saying.
| SACK FREQUENCY SINCE 2011 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Quarterback | Sacks | Plays | Pct |
| Peyton Manning | 39 | 1281 | 3.0% |
| Matthew Stafford | 88 | 2112 | 4.2% |
| Drew Brees | 87 | 2064 | 4.2% |
| Josh Freeman | 63 | 1319 | 4.8% |
| Ryan Fitzpatrick | 73 | 1497 | 4.9% |
| Eli Manning | 86 | 1762 | 4.9% |
| Tom Brady | 99 | 1975 | 5.0% |
| Matt Ryan | 98 | 1930 | 5.1% |
| Matt Schaub | 64 | 1258 | 5.1% |
| Carson Palmer | 84 | 1549 | 5.4% |
| Andy Dalton | 99 | 1729 | 5.7% |
| Andrew Luck | 73 | 1270 | 5.7% |
| Tony Romo | 107 | 1812 | 5.9% |
| Philip Rivers | 109 | 1762 | 6.2% |
| Joe Flacco | 114 | 1801 | 6.3% |
| Ben Roethlisberger | 112 | 1658 | 6.8% |
| Jay Cutler | 80 | 1183 | 6.8% |
| Mark Sanchez | 73 | 1069 | 6.8% |
| Sam Bradford | 86 | 1256 | 6.8% |
| Cam Newton | 114 | 1589 | 7.2% |
| Aaron Rodgers | 108 | 1452 | 7.4% |
| Chad Henne | 77 | 1000 | 7.7% |
| Ryan Tannehill | 93 | 1165 | 8.0% |
| Christian Ponder | 89 | 1102 | 8.1% |
| Alex Smith | 107 | 1278 | 8.4% |
—Ian Allan