A theory on Patrick Mahomes’ (relative) struggles this year with the Kansas City Chiefs
Patrick Mahomes is feeling pressure. That’s affecting his play. But not in the way many of us have been talking about. This is my theory, anyway.
Mahomes is the best player in the league. Let’s start there. This column is not some hot take about his failings, or a sound bite calling him overrated. If the entire league was redrafted, Mahomes would be the first pick.
The leader of the Kansas City Chiefs is on pace to complete 67% of his passes for more than 5,000 yards and 44 touchdowns. Even if you prorate for 16 games and not 17, as teams will play this season, only three quarterbacks have ever been so prolific ... and they’re three of the best of all-time: Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, and Drew Brees.
But it’s not enough, and he knows it, and if you’re asking how this can all be true at the same time — the best player in the league on pace for historic production and he’s still pressing and underperforming? — you’re in the right place.
Two aspects of Mahomes’ brilliance are often overlooked, at least outside of Kansas City, and it’s at least in part because of his reality-bending jump passes, no-looks, off-platform, left-handed, there’s-no-way-he-did-that throws.
The first: He’s (normally) very reliable with the ball, with the league’s lowest interception rate last season.
The second: He simply does not ever play poorly — his worst game last season may have been the day he threw half of his season total for interceptions but also passed for 393 yards and two touchdowns, and made the fourth-down conversion that iced a win in Miami.
Both of those traits have been blown to bits through seven games this season.
It’s a stunning departure from what he’s shown himself to be — from the league’s best interception rate to tied with a Jets rookie (who’s played one fewer game) for the most interceptions … and from consistent excellence to awful decisions and the worst game of his career in a 27-3 loss to the Titans.
Let’s try to unpack the why. I have a theory. Let’s go.
To this point, Mahomes’ career has been a ride on a rocket ship. It’s been, to use his words, “rainbows and flowers and awesome.”
His first year, even the believers expected him to have some brilliant moments but also some big mistakes. The hope was that in the end it would all wash out and be a step in the process. Instead, he won league MVP.
His second year, he cut his interception rate by more than a half and made the run against the Titans and asked for Wasp against the 49ers and won Super Bowl MVP.
His third year, he was roughly as productive as that first year while also leading the league in interception rate. The Chiefs went 16-1 in his starts before the Super Bowl, and even in that loss, the lasting image for a lot of us is the Spiderman throw that hit Darrel Williams in the helmet. NFL Films typically devotes Super Bowl recaps to make the winner look like the ’85 Bears; this time it also included the entire Bucs sideline calling Mahomes a magician.
That stuff feels like a long time ago, back when Mahomes caught the league flat-footed. Now, the Chiefs have been rocked and they’re not comfortable with it.
This is the first time they’ve been the favorites and underperformed.
For two years they were the best in the AFC by a wide margin, and this is the first time they’re feeling a pull the other way.
This is a different type of pressure. Because Mahomes is very, very, very aware of what people say about him. Not just on social media, but everywhere. Remember him counting to four in Baltimore? And to 10 in Chicago? Those public displays of keeping score are more rare than what his friends see in private. One said it goes all the way back to when kids first started making fun of his voice.
He remembers, he inventories, he attacks.
That instinct has served him well, but right now, you can’t help but wonder if he feels the walls are closing in a little.
Because even if you agree with me that he remains the league’s best player, you have to also acknowledge that the gap isn’t as big as it was a year ago, or two. Since he came into the league there hasn’t been a moment like this, where so many teams could credibly say they are this content with their own quarterback — ask the Bucs, Bills, Packers, Chargers, Cowboys, Cardinals, Rams, Ravens, Seahawks, Bengals and Patriots.
That prove-them-wrong instinct is something Mahomes shares with many other great athletes, but it’s not undefeated.
Mahomes is unusually self-aware and honest when evaluating himself. For the first time in his career — after three years of the Chiefs being the rabbit at the dog track — Mahomes is seeing the rest of the league catch up and pass his team.
That’s a ground-shaking adjustment. The man who’s become used to the opponent feeling the weight of his greatness is now feeling the weight of falling behind.
Part of his genius has always been staying juuuuuuuust on the safe side of football’s risk-reward balance, pushing the limits farther than a normal human quarterback should, but still staying within his unique possibilities.
This year, he’s Thelma-and-Louise’d off that cliff.
He’s had some bad luck, too. It’s OK to admit that without seeing it as an excuse. But you can see how balls that could have been intercepted but weren’t had the affect of building his confidence — and now balls that hit receivers in the body and turn into interceptions do the opposite.
That’s what this feels like, anyway. Because that self-described stupid interception in Baltimore — the one that happened in the third quarter that helped the Ravens take control from he Chiefs — is a play he’d never made before this season. Same with the interception in Philadelphia, and the second one in Washington. The interception in Nashville was on first down in the first half on the type of YOLO decision that should be reserved for fourth down in the fourth quarter.
He talks of needing to make better decisions and to take the short stuff when the big shots aren’t there, but then takes risks he’s proven he knows to avoid while overlooking short passes when the long ones aren’t there. And so the cycle repeats.
Something is muddying his decision-making, and it has to be about more than the defense, because only a few of these screw-ups have come in late-game catchup situations.
My working theory is that before the most recent Super Bowl, the momentum was Mahomes starting to close the gap with Tom Brady as the best of all-time. And ever since, the momentum has been others closing the gap with him as the best today.
He cares about this stuff. He talks about dominating on the field and transcending off of it, and that hits different when you’re the MVP and Super Bowl champ compared to when you’re 3-4 with the same interception rate as Sam Darnold (who was just benched). That’s a new kind of pressure, one he hasn’t dealt with yet.
Nobody knows how this will go. Not just the rest of the season, but the rest of Mahomes’ career. He’s at a defining moment.
He is too gifted, too committed and too smart for me to believe he won’t pull out of this. No athlete has ever breezed into a hall of fame without going through a slump and, if anything, it’s outrageous that he’s gone this long before experiencing one.
The success will come back. The questions are how long it will take, and how he’ll be on the other side. It’s a different career now. This is the most successful athlete in Kansas City history struggling, and evolving.