The San Francisco 49ers may not be in need of a starting quarterback, but the Washington Redskins are ... or ... they were. That changed on Tuesday night when Washington reached an agreement with the Kansas City Chiefs to exchange cornerback Kendall Fuller and a 2018 third-round draft pick for quarterback Alex Smith.
Smith, who spent his first eight NFL seasons in San Francisco and led the 49ers to an NFC Championship game during the 2011 season, was traded to Kansas City on February 27, 2013. The deal became official at the start of the new league year on March 12, 2013. Smith has spent the past five seasons as the starting quarterback of the Chiefs, who drafted Patrick Mahomes with the 10th-overall pick in last year's draft.
"I've been playing long enough," Smith said on The Dan Patrick Show just hours before the trade became known. "I've been through this before, the trade deal, so I'm not naive to it. This is a crazy business. A lot of crazy stuff can happen, so we'll see."
Smith had a strong season with the Chiefs in 2017. He achieved career highs in passing yards (4,042), touchdowns (26), and a league-best passer rating of 104.7.
As part of the trade agreement, Smith will receive a four-year contract extension reportedly worth $94 million with $71 million guaranteed, per Ian Rapoport of NFL Network. That's an average of $23.5 million per year. That also means over 75-percent of his contract will be guaranteed. Smith's contract was set to expire following the 2018 season. By comparison, 68-percent of Matthew Stafford's $135 million deal last offseason was guaranteed.
Why are the contract numbers of a former San Francisco quarterback important to the 49ers? Any new quarterback contract is important because the resulting numbers can be used during the negotiation process as San Francisco attempts to sign Jimmy Garoppolo to a long-term deal. Right now, he is scheduled to become a free agent on March 14. Of course, the 49ers have the franchise tag at their disposal, which can extend the contract negotiations through July 16 or, at the very minimum, keep Garoppolo in San Francisco for one more season at the estimated cost of about $23.5 million.
Other quarterback deals could be coming. Aaron Rogers is expected to land a new contract with the Green Bay Packers. ESPN insider Adam Schefter recently said that Garoppolo and his agent, Don Yee, may not want to get a deal done with the 49ers too quickly so they can see what Rogers ends up with in Green Bay.
"The issue that you have here, I think, is that at some point this offseason, we may see a deal get done for Aaron Rodgers," Schefter recently said on KNBR. "And when those numbers come in, they're going to be really high. Really high. So if you're the 49ers, you may want to move quicker. And if you're Jimmy Garoppolo, Jimmy GQ and Don Yee, I think you probably want to slow play this until these numbers come in because they're only going to boost your value."
The Smith trade means Kirk Cousins, who had been linked to head coach Kyle Shanahan and the 49ers before the acquisition of Garoppolo, will likely hit free agency on March 14. With Washington out of the picture, that leaves teams like the Arizona Cardinals, Buffalo Bills, Cleveland Browns, Denver Broncos, and New York Jets in the hunt for new starting quarterbacks. One of those teams could make Cousins the highest paid player in NFL history.
Washington will own 13th-overall spot in April's draft. Of the quarterback-needy teams mentioned earlier, only the Browns, Broncos, and Jets select before the 49ers, who will pick ninth or 10th, depending on the result of a coin flip against the Oakland Raiders. The other teams are the New York Giants, Indianapolis Colts, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and Chicago Bears.
Washington is unlikely to be among the teams looking to move up for a quarterback now. If you think the number nine or ten spot in a quarterback-rich draft is too low to garner any genuine interest, remember that the Chiefs paid a hefty bounty last year to move up to a similar spot to select Mahomes. Also, remember that 49ers general manager John Lynch and company acquired a pretty solid haul from the Bears to move down just one spot in 2017.