Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Alex Smith expressed “shock” over the abrupt regime change in San Francisco, including the firing of 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh.

Smith, who played for the 49ers for seven seasons, told the San Jose Mercury News that he doesn’t understand why Harbaugh and almost all of his coaching staff were sent packing after the 2014 season — despite the team going to three NFC championship games and a Super Bowl in Harbaugh’s four years.

“I think for me, it’s still just tough to believe all those guys are gone, all that turnover,” said Smith, who was participating at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am on Saturday. “I wasn’t there so obviously it’s hard for me to speculate on any of that. I was just kind of shocked. There were a lot of ballgames that got won over the last few years, but for whatever reason, they couldn’t make it work. I don’t know.”

Now a fixture in Kansas City after two seasons with the Chiefs, Smith added that he thinks highly of Jim Tomsula, the new San Francisco head coach, and thinks the 49ers can succeed with him.

“I know he has the ability to be a head coach. He’s a good man, a really good coach. I’m pulling for him,” Smith said of Tomsula.

On Friday, Harbaugh offered some insights into his departure from 49ers, saying that the team wanted him out — not the mutual breakup that the front office had announced.

Harbaugh said he was informed on the Monday after a loss to the Seattle Seahawks in Week 15 that he would not be retained.

“Yes, I was told I wouldn’t be the coach anymore — and you can call it mutual. I wasn’t going to put the 49ers in a position to have a coach they didn’t want anymore,” Harbaugh said during a podcast with Tim Kawakami of the San Jose Mercury News. “That’s the truth of it. I didn’t leave the 49ers, I felt like the 49er hierarchy left me.”

But he chose to stick around until the end of the season.

“I wanted to finish what I started — what we started,” Harbaugh said. “And I have great fond memories of it.”

Harbaugh left the day after the season ended and last month took the head coaching job at Michigan, his alma mater.