You don’t suppose this was A.J. Smith’s subtle revenge for getting fired by Dean Spanos four years ago, do you?

With a few well-chosen words on a San Diego radio show the other night, the former general manager of the Chargers blew his old boss’ negotiating leverage right out of the water, while stating what many around the team and the NFL had already believed to be true.

Smith, now retired and living in Del Mar, was a guest on the XEPRS/1090 talk show hosted by San Diego Union-Tribune columnist Kevin Acee, and it was there that he dropped this bombshell: The “option” that the Chargers have to move to Los Angeles and bunk with Stan Kroenke’s Rams? It really isn’t one.

“The reality is, there is no option,” he said. “There is an option, but it will never be exercised.”

Smith said his “sources” around the league made it clear that the NFL greatly values the San Diego market, and while it will do everything it can to help the Chargers get a new stadium, at the end of the day it is insistent that they remain in San Diego instead of being an afterthought in L.A., and eventually Inglewood.

All of which makes perfect sense and really shouldn’t ever have been questioned.

When the “option” was first announced by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell in January, after the Chargers/Raiders Carson initiative was resoundingly rejected 30-2 in favor of Kroenke’s Inglewood project, the look on Chargers CEO Spanos’ face was one of utter shock. Giving the Chargers the right of first refusal to join Kroenke appears to have been nothing more than a face-saving mechanism.

That all seems so long ago, doesn’t it?

Since then, the Rams have re-established their roots in Los Angeles and tapped into a tidal wave of enthusiasm unusual for a region that’s usually fairly sophisticated about this sort of thing.

Remember how L.A. aggressively ignored the Clippers when they moved north from San Diego in 1984? That’s what the Chargers would be facing, and it probably would be even worse.

So instead they’re pushing Measure C, for approval of public funding to build a stadium/convention center annex wedged next to Petco Park in downtown San Diego. But that seems doomed, since it needs a two-thirds supermajority to pass and in the most recent poll had somewhere around 39 percent support.

In fact, current conversation in San Diego centers on what the Chargers do after the measure fails, and what percentage of the vote would put them in a position to re-open negotiations with the city.

It’s also no accident that, as of Saturday, San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer has yet to take a position on Measure C, 53 days before voters go to the polls. Why should he waste political capital on a question that, in all likelihood, will remain unanswered after Election Day?

But Smith’s comments had Spanos and his people scrambling into damage control mode. So, I suspect, did the 2016 edition of Forbes Magazine’s valuations of NFL teams, which came out Wednesday and revealed that the Chargers are now worth $2.08 billion, 21st among the NFL’s 32 teams and a 36 percent increase in value from a year ago.

Fred Maas, the point man for the Yes on C campaign, appeared on Acee’s 1090 show a day after Smith and emphasized that the size of the vote will determine whether the Chargers feel they’re wanted in San Diego — less than 50 percent support, he said, would be “a fairly strong indication of people’s (lack of) willingness to keep the team here.”

And as for that option?

“I can tell you firsthand, and equally unequivocally, that the only option other than Measure C is a departure to Los Angeles,” he told the radio audience.

“I’ve seen the deal there, and I will tell you if it was you or me or any other reasonable person, we’d be looking for a house somewhere on the west side of Los Angeles … There is a very fixed and firm opportunity that far surpasses whatever the best opportunity may be in San Diego.”

Really?

Even if the league doesn’t want you in L.A.? Even if the L.A. fans don’t want you in L.A.? And, most specifically, even if Kroenke doesn’t want you as a partner or tenant in L.A.?

Make no mistake, these are scare tactics. Maas, who was brought in to be the good cop after Mark Fabiani’s bad cop routine alienated most of the fan base and just about everyone in city government, apparently is no less ham-handed than his predecessor as stadium point man had been.

It certainly won’t gain the Chargers many votes. This is an electorate where lots of people want no public money to go to a stadium project — the Forbes valuation is a killer there — and a good number also object to the attempt to shoehorn a football stadium into that East Village area, instead of finding a way to either build anew on the Mission Valley site or (this is a reach) to somehow remodel Qualcomm.

And I never thought I’d say this, during the years when Smith’s bluster and stubbornness at the general manager’s desk frequently had Chargers fans in an uproar. But the choice here seems easy.

In A.J. they trust.

CONTACT THE WRITER: jalexander@scng.com

On Twitter: @Jim_Alexander