National media is gushing about Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes after his dazzling start

Quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ amazing start to the season — 10 touchdowns, no interceptions — has helped the Chiefs to a pair of big road wins over the Chargers and Steelers.

It’s got Chiefs fans buzzing, and here’s the thing, members of the national media are also gushing over Mahomes. The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and Yahoo Sports all had stories about Mahomes’ quick start. I’ve included a snippet of what each person wrote and you can click the link to read the full stories, although some may require a paid subscription.

Here is what people are saying.

Adam Kilgore of the Washington Post wrote a story with the headline, “The NFL belongs to Patrick Mahomes now.”

“His physical ability and phenomenal performances fail to encapsulate Mahomes’s place in the league,” Kilgore wrote. “He’s too physically gifted to be seen as a prototype — good luck finding the next mobile, 6-foot-3 quarterback who can throw it 70 yards in the air. But Mahomes — a collegiate product of the ‘Air Raid’ offense, a starting quarterback on his rookie deal, a triggerman for Andy Reid’s designs and a conductor of concepts taken from college football — is something close to an ideal of modern NFL quarterback. He fits into every way the league is leaning.

“Reid’s schemes have become the model for how offense is played. Seven NFL head coaches once coached under Reid, including reigning Super Bowl winner Doug Pederson and the Chicago Bears’s Matt Nagy, whose creative play-calling would have been the talk of the league if not for Aaron Rodgers’s heroics last Sunday night in Green Bay’s comeback victory. Mahomes’s talent may have made him a star in any setting, but he landed with perhaps the best developer of quarterbacks and most influential offensive mind in the game.”

Kilgore concludes with this:

“And so Sunday may have only been a start for Mahomes. He will face stiffer challenges than Pittsburgh’s secondary, to be sure, and not every Sunday will feel like a glimpse into a fluorescent future of the sport. But through two weeks, Mahomes hasn’t only been the most impressive player in the league. He’s been a signpost of where the sport is headed.”

Andrew Beaton of the Wall Street Journal wrote a story with the headline, “Patrick Mahomes is conquering the NFL.”

Beaton opened the piece by writing about the risk the Chiefs took in trading away Alex Smith, who had a great season, and making the unproven Mahomes the starter.

“Two weeks into this season, it’s no longer reasonable to question if Mahomes is good, and it’s far more reasonable to ponder if Mahomes is great,” Beaton wrote. “That much was clear after his second consecutive monster game. He threw for six touchdowns in a 42-37 win against the Steelers—giving him 10 through the season’s first two weeks.

“Mahomes, 22 years old, is now the youngest player in the Super Bowl era with a six-touchdown passing game. His 10 throwing scores are a record for the first two weeks of the season. But his eye-popping statistics, somehow, aren’t even the most jarring aspect of what he has done so far. That’s because somehow what he has done is less notable than how he has done it.

“Mahomes has dazzled with heaves uncommon in the modern NFL, which has increasingly shifted toward favoring high-probability short passes over riskier and longer ones. Mahomes has taken that trend and blasted it to smithereens with the bazooka attached to the right side of his torso.”

Yahoo Sports’ Terez Paylor, the former Kansas City Star writer, had a column with the headline, “The legend of Patrick Mahomes grows as the Chiefs appear to have found their QB savior.”

Paylor mentioned the Chiefs’ past troubles against the Steelers and why Sunday’s win meant that much more in Kansas City.

“Mahomes has shown it all in wins against the Steelers and Chargers, including a rifle arm, moxie and the ability to throw under duress and from different platforms. The Chiefs needed every last drop of his talent to come out with the win on Sunday, as Mahomes managed to outduel (Ben) Roethlisberger, Pittsburgh’s future Hall of Famer, who completed 39 of 60 passes for 452 yards and three touchdowns.

“Mahomes’ numbers already look ridiculous on the surface, but his performance is even more impressive when you consider it came against a Steelers team whose reliance on a fire zone pressure – where five defenders rush the passer and while the others (including defensive linemen) drop into coverage — has vexed the Chiefs in all of their previous five meetings under Reid.”

Paylor later added: “Time after time against the Steelers, Mahomes’ ability to keep his eyes up under pressure, scan the pocket and deliver lasers from different platforms and launch points made the difference. The Steelers even became so weary of seeing Mahomes defeat their blitz packages that by the end of the game, they’d started dialing back on the blitzing in lieu of dropping more men into coverage.

“Do not underestimate the importance of this. It is the ultimate show of respect, one reserved almost solely for quarterbacks like Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady, guys who can use their brains and rocket arms to destroy the zone blitzes that naturally leave defenses thin on players in actual coverages.”

Finally, it should come as no surprise that Peter Schrager, who is on “Good Morning Football” on the NFL Network, was wowed by Mahomes on Sunday:

This story was originally published September 17, 2018 at 9:28 AM.