Support is building for Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes to win NFL MVP award
The NFL MVP award winner won’t be announced until Feb. 2, but one player has garnered a lot of support in recent days:
Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes.
Mahomes had 5,097 passing yards and a league-best 50 touchdowns and 9.6 yards per attempt in helping the Chiefs win the AFC West, and people have been making the case for Mahomes to be MVP. That includes The Star’s Sam Mellinger and Vahe Gregorian.
It had seemed to be a two-man race between Mahomes and Saints quarterback Drew Brees, but support for Brees appears to be waning.
Here is what people are saying and a sample of what they’re writing about Mahomes:
Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk wrote: “Weeks of debate and discussion became a no brainer once the season ended. Fifty touchdown passes. More than 5,000 passing yards. More highlights in one season than most quarterbacks create in an entire career.
“Funny body throws. Off balance throws. Sidearm throws. No-look throws. Mahomes is a new breed of quarterback, and a guy who immediately became the best player in the sport. And he’s only 23.
“Get used to this outcome. Barring injury, Mahomes will be regarded as one of the best players in football for the next decade or longer. That’s good for football, great for the Chiefs, and bad for whoever will be getting in their way.”
Fox Sports’ Nick Wright said Mahomes should be the unanimous MVP while talking with Colin Cowherd: “Colin, sometimes things aren’t complicated. Fifty touchdowns, 5,000 yards. (Colts quarterback Andrew) Luck’s had a great year. He’s had 39 touchdowns. He has been sacked eight times in the last 10 weeks of football. What Mahomes did this year is one of the three greatest quarterbacking seasons ever: ‘07 (Tom) Brady, 2013 (Peyton) Manning, 2018 Mahomes.”
Peter King, in his “Football Morning In America” column for Pro Football Talk, wrote that Mahomes should win the MVP award: “The late Paul Zimmerman left me with one indelible lesson: ‘USE YOUR EYES! What did you see!’ What I saw watching the game this season was Mahomes, a 23-year-old kid, an electric kid, taking over a division champion when incumbent Alex Smith was traded, playing like he belonged from the first series of the season, outplaying Philip Rivers on the road in Week 1, outplaying Ben Roethlisberger on the road in Week 2, throwing a left-handed desperation pass completion on third-and-five at Denver on the winning late drive in Week 4, going toe-to-toe with Tom Brady and surviving a bad first half in a 43-40 loss in Week 6, hiccupping at the Rams in the bizarre 54-51 November loss, and then willing his team to beat the formidable Ravens in Week 14.”
Former NFL defensive end Marcellus Wiley seemed baffled by the support for Brees over Mahomes. Here is what he said on Fox Sports’ “Speak For Yourself:” “Did Drew Brees actually lose a ballgame for his squad where Patrick Mahomes never did this year? He did. He had one game where he had a 71 quarterback rating and 127 yards against the Dallas Cowboys. And if Drew Brees was anything near the MVP-standard Drew Brees, they win that game. Patrick Mahomes has not lost a game this year where his quarterback rating wasn’t 103 or higher. So his worst is by far better than Drew Brees’ worst.”
All five CBS writers (John Breech, Will Brinson, Jared Dubin, Sean Wagner-McGough and Ryan Wilson) picked Mahomes as the MVP winner. Wagner-McGough wrote: “In recent weeks, an unfair narrative designed to boost Brees over Mahomes sprouted up. It said that while Mahomes has the better overall numbers than Brees, he didn’t play as well in big games. Except that, in the Chiefs’ four losses this season, which came against the Patriots, Rams, Chargers, and Seahawks — all playoff teams, by the way — Mahomes averaged 336.5 passing yards per game, and threw 15 touchdowns and five interceptions overall. The Chiefs averaged an insane 37.5 points per loss. If you extrapolate his statistics in those four losses to an entire season’s worth of games, Mahomes would’ve thrown for 5,384 yards and 60 touchdowns. Mahomes did not struggle in losses or big games this season.”
Steve Serby of the New York Post wrote: “Heading into Sunday, Mahomes has 4,816 yards passing, 48 touchdowns against 11 interceptions, that switch-to-the-left-hand-while-Von-Miller-is-chasing-you completion to Tyreek Hill, those off-schedule sidearm missiles. Everyone welcome the young Brett Favre.”
