The quarterback has more interceptions than touchdowns this season. But his struggles speak more of a player adjusting to circumstances than one in decline.
Seven weeks into their bid for immortality, the Kansas City Chiefs are undefeated. They’ve ripped off wins against the likes of the Ravens, 49ers and Bengals on their way to a 6-0 start. On defense they’ve been elite, putting a succession of the game’s best quarterbacks through the blender. The back-to-back champs should have the feel of a runaway juggernaut, but something is amiss with KC’s offense.
Given his body of work, Patrick Mahomes is the best quarterback in the NFL. That isn’t an opinion, it’s a statement of fact. But through the opening stages of the season, the Chiefs have fielded a middling offense and Mahomes has been a statistically middling quarterback. The Chiefs’ offense has yet to score 30 points in a game, despite facing only one defense in the top 12 in EPA/play, a measure of a unit’s down-to-down effectiveness.
Hand Mahomes that kind of schedule in an ordinary year, and you could hand in your MVP ballot in October and hit the cocktail bar. Instead, the Chiefs’ quarterback is off to the worst regular season of his career and Lamar Jackson is, correctly, favorite to win MVP for the second year in succession. Mahomes, on the other hand, is completing a solid 67% of his passes but has thrown only six touchdowns to eight interceptions. His passer rating through seven weeks (82.5) is 20 points below his career average (102.5). If that’s not enough, Mahomes has had more games this season where he’s thrown for fewer than 150 yards than he has games where he’s eclipsed 300.
But those figures are not illustrative of Mahomes’s overall game. There have still been moments of individual brilliance, with the quarterback dragging a beleaguered offense over the line in tight contests. He continues to influence games with his legs, scrambling to avoid negative plays or to keep the chains moving. But, as we approach the half-way point of the regular season, KC’s passing game has hit one of the lowest ebbs of the quarterback’s career.
“I just don’t think it’s normal for what you’ve seen from us because there’s not a lot of passing touchdowns,” Mahomes said this week. “There’s been a lot of turnovers, especially by me. So, I think it’s just showing the versatility of our team. It’s not just about me. It’s not just about the stats and the light show and stuff like that. It’s about playing team football.”
At his best, Mahomes is an offense unto himself: a slick playmaker who warps defenses, dicing them up from the pocket or extending plays to engineer shots downfield. But that version of Mahomes has yet to show up this season. These days, Mahomes plays with old-man savvy. On a possession-by-possession basis, he toggles personae. The old swashbuckling Mahomes is in there, ready to burst out when required. But Mahomes, who is still only 29, now spends prolonged stretches of games channeling late-stage Drew Brees, handing the ball off to the team’s bruising runners and methodically marching the Chiefs down the field.