Why the Kansas City Chiefs should not start Patrick Mahomes immediately

The Kansas City Chiefs are not the typical team with a promising rookie quarterback. Usually the way a team lands a quarterback with Mahomes’s upside is by being a really bad football team and, consequently, landing an early draft pick. That’s not the Chiefs. The Chiefs had to trade up into the top ten to land Mahomes and were far from bad last season. In fact, I would say they were generally considered one of the eight best football teams in the NFL. For a team that won four or five games last season, the question of whether a rookie quarterback gives them the absolute best chance to win isn’t as relative. For a team like the Chiefs that are considered a strong playoff contender, it absolutely is.

If you take a quick peek at current NFL power rankings you’ll see that not much has changed. The Chiefs are still seen as one of the better teams in the NFL. In the handful that I looked at I saw them as high as fifth and as low as ninth. This is a team that almost everyone thinks will be a playoff caliber team this season. That is not a team you just throw a rookie quarterback out there with and see what happens—not when you have a proven winner in Alex Smith still on the roster. I understand the logic of those that say if Mahomes is the future you might as well start his time now and accelerate his development. We’ll get to the dangers of that from a developmental standpoint in a minute, but from a team aspect that’s just not fair to the rest of the roster.

Kansas City Chiefs

The Chiefs have a team that can win now. You could focus on aging veterans like Derrick Johnson and how it would be unfair to them to potentially waste a playoff caliber season just because you are excited about the upside of a rookie quarterback, but its really unfair to the entire roster. NFL players’ careers are incredibly short and the Chiefs owe it to every man on that roster to try and win as many games as possible THIS season. Could the Chiefs still have some success with Mahomes at QB? Sure, I would trust Andy Reid to come up with a game plan that Mahomes could handle and I think he would probably have a really solid rookie season. However, let’s say the Chiefs are expected to win 11 games with Smith as their QB, that number would probably drop to eight or nine with Mahomes. While its only a few games that could be the difference between a playoff run or sitting at home in January.

I’m sure a few of you are already headed to the comments to tell me that the offense would be better with Mahomes this season than it would be with Smith under center. Let’s slow your roll with that one. I’m thrilled with how Mahomes has looked this preseason, but to say that he’s been better than Smith would be inaccurate. Alex Smith has looked great so far and his performances in the preseason games has matched all the reports coming out of training camp. Smith is dialed in and he has done it exclusively against first string defenses while Mahomes has mostly been playing against second and third string defenses playing generic preseason schemes.

I get it, Mahomes has showed some things in his playing time that Smith hasn’t. Mahomes ability to escape when things break down and keep his eyes down field (while Smith often tucks and runs) is special. While Mahomes has had those “wow” plays where he improvises and gets out of trouble, Smith has found success actually running Andy Reid’s offense. Let’s not forget that for all our gushing over Mahomes, Smith has a higher completion percentage (80% to 73.9%) and a much better yards per attempt number (8.7 to 6.0). That second number there is the most telling to me. “Captain Checkdown” Alex Smith is completing significantly longer passes than “Mr. Cannon Armed Gunslinger” Patrick Mahomes. The two best deep passes of the preseason so far both belong to Smith, not Mahomes. The opening throw in week one to Tyreek Hill on the outside was perfectly placed, as was the deep ball down the middle to Travis Kelce this week against the Bengals.

Alex Smith knows this offense inside and out. He knows where his receivers are going to be. He understands NFL defenses and is going to be two steps ahead of a rookie when it comes to knowing what to do on any given play. Can Mahomes make up for some of that by improvising and using his strong arm? Sure, but the goal is to succeed by design, not to rely on Mahomes escapability in order to keep the chains moving. This skill of Mahomes is a great fall back plan but it shouldn’t be the plan. Again, I love Mahomes has shown so far but I think anyone that says the offense would be better with Mahomes in 2017 at this point is getting a little too caught up on the hype train.

I understand that Alex Smith has his limitations. I understand that there will be times this season where he will frustrate all of us. That doesn’t mean he isn’t the best option for the Chiefs in order to win the division and make the playoffs in 2017. Do I think he makes them a Super Bowl favorite? No, but if they can make the playoffs you never know what can happen. Maybe Father Time finally catches up to Tom Brady. Maybe injuries decimate a couple of teams that were suppose to be the favorites.

The bottom line is that this Chiefs team is too talented to just write this year off as a developmental one. The Chiefs are built to contend now and that’s what they should do. That means that Alex Smith should start and Patrick Mahomes should focus on mastering the offense and watching how Reid and Smith attack different NFL defensive schemes.

Now let’s look at why sitting this season is best for Patrick Mahomes long-term development.