In the years since Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes became the team’s starter, it has become fashionable in some NFL circles to think that other quarterbacks will soon surpass him — if they haven’t already.

But his former teammate Alex Smith doesn’t travel in those circles. As far as he is concerned, Mahomes is still the league’s top dog in one critical category — and perhaps not the one you might think.

“I think he’s the best quarterback in the NFL at the line of scrimmage — when you talk about making protection adjustments [and] getting to the right play,” Smith said in an interview on “The Rich Eisen Show” that aired on Thursday. “But the problem is [that] he’s so good at [improvising] that I think it gets the attention.”

Still, he told Eisen that while Mahomes was a rookie backup during Smith’s final season with the Chiefs in 2017, it wasn’t immediately apparent that the former Texas Tech gunslinger was ready to go.

“It’s hard when you’re a backup quarterback,” explained Smith. “You’re on the scout team, [so] you don’t get a lot of reps to shine. As quarterbacks in practice, we wear this bright yellow jersey; you’re kind of untouchable. [But] there was no thing early on that he did that made you think, ‘Oh, he’s got it.’”

But as time went on — especially during Mahomes’ first start against the Denver Broncos in the season’s final game — it became obvious to Smith that his own days with the Chiefs were numbered.

“There were throws that he made on the practice field,” he recalled, “and you [started] to see how fast he was processing. It’s certainly [true] that [in the] last game you referenced, [to go] out there in an NFL game and play the way he did, I think everybody that was there that day knew that he was ready. Certainly for me, [I] knew the writing was on the wall.”

While Smith respects Mahomes’ talent, he also thinks Kansas City’s decision to give Mahomes a redshirt season — something the San Francisco 49ers chose not to do when Smith joined the team as the draft’s first overall pick in 2005 — has played a big part in the Chiefs’ subsequent success.

“I think the ability to have some freedom to develop and not play right away [was a factor],” he said. “Certainly [Mahomes could] have, of course. But I think in Kansas City, they’re reaping the rewards of that kind of patience.”