Chase Daniel - Valuable Asset or Trade Bait?

This year will be Chase Daniel’s seventh season in the NFL, over this time Daniel has shown a sufficient level of consistency. However, he has never managed to pry the starting job away from the starter; this is mainly due to Daniel never being on a bad team, he has only ever competed with future hall of famer Drew Brees and the Chiefs' very own Alex Smith. Daniel has never been in a stereotypical “quarterback battle” and has therefore, lived his playing career as a back-up. This begs the question, could Chase Daniel be a viable, above average option in the NFL.

It is very hard to really evaluate Daniel’s play, as he is only ever on the field in pre-season and in “garbage time”, where he never really faces the out and out first stringers. Over his career, Daniel has accumulated in the regular season, 75 attempts and 48 completions, he has also only ever thrown for one touchdown which was in the 2013 season.

Daniel has already started the season off on a high with an excellent performance in the Chiefs’ 34-19 victory over the Arizona Cardinals. The quarterback finished the game with 189 yards which included 3 touchdowns, arguably the most impressive performance of any back-up quarterback in the first week of the pre-season. Even though most of Daniel’s were short yardage gains, he showed great poise and awareness in the pocket and always looked in control against a very good Bruce Arians’ led defense.

In a recent article Marc Sessler of NFL.com ranked Daniel as the 11th best back-up quarterback in the NFL saying “Daniel plays with confidence, on tape he looks like a future starter for stretches, but also threw too many off-target darts in 2014”, Sessler also said that Daniel is a “serviceable stand-in”. I would have to agree with his evaluation and ranking as he only has younger players with higher ceilings above; at this point we do probably know Daniel’s ceiling.

Will it be worth it for the Chiefs to trade Daniel away? There are many teams with an abysmal quarterback situation who would love an experienced player like Daniel to come in and take control. The Chiefs could probably gain a 4th - 6th round pick for Daniel’s services however, this is not worth it. The Chiefs’ have right now what many teams lack and would kill for, stability at the quarterback position, they know if Alex Smith goes down they don’t have a Mike Vick-esque player to come in and ruin their season; this is something they don’t want to lose.

Overall, everybody knows that Daniel has a 0% chance of starting over a fit Alex Smith. However, the Chiefs should definitely value what they have in Chase Daniel and should not let go of him lightly. Iron a few faults out and there’s a chance Daniel could be a slightly above average quarterback helping a bad team. But, I’m not sure he will ever get the chance to prove himself.