Yes, Patrick Mahomes can still beat you. Was that really a question?
This season has required Patrick Mahomes to fight an urge that’s defined the early years of his career. He’s a gunslinger by nature, as his offensive coordinator put it, but his nature isn’t practical right now.
A combination of defensive schemes and playing with leads have provided reasons why he can’t be that guy for the Chiefs. Or at least why he shouldn’t be that guy. And he’s obliged.
Forget that.
This was vintage Patrick Mahomes in Sunday’s 35-9 win against the Jets, in both individual play and numbers on a stat sheet.
Or should we say, Young Patrick.
Mahomes passed for a season-best 416 yards and threw for five touchdowns for the first time this year, the kind of day he tallied so regularly in his 2018 NFL Most Valuable Player season.
“It’s good to be able to do this — to have a game like this,” Mahomes said.
Then, fully committing to how things have changed this season, he added, completely serious, “And show teams we can do multiple things and not just one.”
Well, this was one teams probably already knew about.
Yes, Patrick Mahomes can beat you.
His day was finished with more than 9 minutes left in the fourth quarter, yielding to Chad Henne for the second consecutive week. But after the defense and special teams prompted the Chiefs’ blowout in Denver, this was all Mahomes.
The Chiefs didn’t have much of a running game this week — their longest carry in the initial three quarters was four yards — but Mahomes needed no assistance.
After giving way to the other two phases of the game last week, he planted his proverbial flag, and declared, This one’s mine.
The throws, sure. They were good. But much of the work came beforehand, actually. Mahomes turned run-pass options into big gains in the air. On his final snap, Mahomes recognized the Jets were bringing a blitz and checked out of the initial play call.
His substitute? A Tyreek Hill go-route down the left sideline. Not a bad choice. Mahomes fired a strike down the left sideline for a 41-yard score.
“He had complete command of everything going on,” Chiefs coach Andy Reid said.
That was the final one. Four came earlier. Mahomes touched a pass to Mecole Hardman on the opening drive, and Hardman weaved 30 yards for the first touchdown. Then Mahomes found Hill over the middle for a 36-yard score. And he flipped an underhanded toss to Travis Kelce for a 3-yard TD. Then found Demarcus Robinson for 26.
After his last snap — the deep touchdown to Hill after changing the playcall — Mahomes raced downfield and promptly gave Hill a piggyback ride as they returned to the bench.
How fitting, right?
Mahomes operated with a particularly clean pocket— he wasn’t sacked once, nor did he need to scramble on a rush — but his off-script playmaking showed up, too. The underhand pass is unique to him, and he’s thrown it twice this season. For good measure, he tossed this one without even looking at Kelce, picking him out on a middle screen but glancing to the right to bait the defense.
“That underhand one is sweet,” Mahomes said. “Every time I get the opportunity to do that, I take advantage.”
And that’s really what came about against the winless Jets — opportunity. It’s been a year of adjustments for Mahomes, more mental than physical. That gunslinger nature remains, but the times and places in which to unleash it have dwindled.
He’s appropriately settled for the shorter and intermediate throws, or sometimes he’s avoided a throw altogether. It’s for the betterment of the team, he has explained, but, yeah, it’s easier said than done.
No need to hold back Sunday. The Jets’ defense spent as much time squeezing the run game as they did limiting the Chiefs’ deep passes. Mahomes averaged 9.9 yards per attempt, a jump from the career-low 7.8 he’d been averaging this year. Three of his touchdowns traveled more than 20 yards in the air before reaching their final destination.
It was almost as if the Jets had dared Mahomes and the Chiefs passing game to be what beat them.
And again, he obliged.
“We’ve kind of been saying it all year long — we have a lot of ways that we can beat teams,” Mahomes said. “Today, they were doing a good job of stuffing the run, and we took it to the air and threw the ball and made plays happen that way.
“Now that you see that we can throw the ball on teams, we can run the ball on teams ... it’s about taking what’s there and finding the best way to win a football game.”
This story was originally published November 1, 2020 at 4:14 PM.