How Patrick Mahomes is taking the NFL by storm:
Patrick Mahomes was one of the most polarizing and fascinating draft prospects I can remember in years at the quarterback position. He put up mind-boggling numbers at Texas Tech, including a senior year with over 5000 yards and 41 touchdowns through the air. At his pro day, Mahomes threw the ball 80 yards and he showed off his tremendous arm talent throughout his collegiate career when he was tossing deep bombs on a weekly basis.
However, he came from an Air Raid offensive system, which has produced dozens of signal-callers who have put up crazy stats in college but never were able to come close to that kind of success in the pros. Therefore the Chiefs received some criticism for trading up all the way to the tenth overall pick for their quarterback in 2016, with Alex Smith still on the roster. Less than two years removed from that, Mahomes now has set a new NFL record for most passing touchdowns in his team’s first two games with ten of those and has his offense scoring 40 points per game. I want to recap why I had him graded as a second-round pick and how he has proven me and so many other analysts wrong in such phenomenal fashion.
Early doubts
I had Mahomes graded as a second-round pick when I worked on my draft rankings for April last year. The incredible talent was apparent and I could see the potential, but Mahomes was far from being a quarterback under control, who could run a pro-style offense.
For the purpose of this article I went back to his tape at Texas Tech and to be honest, I still wouldn’t move him up too much if I had to grade him again, Way too many times he didn’t step into the throw and tossed the ball all over the yard off his backfoot, He kind of picked up his back-leg or kept it planted into the turf instead of swinging it through and had a basketball-type release. When Mahomes did step up into the pocket, he rushed things and sometimes saw the ball leave his hands with both feet in the air.
With that being said, I thought the mechanical issues could be fixed, since I saw him perform a flawless motion occasionally and the ball came out beautifully, but getting Mahomes to function within the structure of an offense felt like trying to tame a wild horse. It didn’t look like the Texas Tech star was working through his progressions and making the correct read according to the defensive coverage, but rather he just had his primary guy schemed wide open or he would run around and fling it down the field. Routinely Mahomes would move to either side and set up his throws in favor of moving up inside the pocket and ended up throwing the ball across his body. He was kind of playing catch out there with his guys and way too often he threw up wild prayers that would make me pull my hair out on the sideline as a coach.
I simply thought Mahomes took way too many chances, that he didn’t need to take. There were so many plays where he continued to back up, spin away, pull himself out of a tackle and then threw the ball late over the middle of the field. That just won’t work in the NFL. Players are too fast and stuff like that screams for turnovers. The Texas Tech offense was a firework with Mahomes at the helm, but that didn’t really lead to wins as the Red Raiders went 12-16 with him as a starter and they even had a negative record when he had that historical junior campaign. Just take his performance versus Oklahoma back in 2016, when he set a new FBS record of 819 total yards. The Red Raiders needed every single one of his 52 completions in a 66-59 shootout, but it was a silly interception he threw rolling to the right, not setting his feet and just letting it float up in the air for the safety to pick off, that put them into catch-up mode and down by two scores until the very end of the game.