The last word on Patrick Mahomes (for now)
The season is almost here. Now is the time to look back on what we’ve seen from rookie quarterback Patrick Mahomes before he goes back behind the scenes for the year.
On the second, Joshua recaps Thursday’s thrilling preseason performance from Mahomes and discusses what it means to be a “quarterback moderate.”
I’ve been largely confused by the reaction of roughly half of Chiefs Kingdom whenever Patrick Mahomes has looked good this offseason and preseason. As choruses of praise and excitement for the future of the Chiefs’ quarterback position have erupted, they’ve been met with equal choruses of pessimism and reminders that Mahomes “isn’t ready” to be an NFL quarterback.
This leads me to believe three things about much of this fanbase.
- Kansas City has become so accustomed to poor quarterback play that an average starting quarterback is defended by the masses in a way that would never be considered in a less-quarterback-repressed market.
- We don’t know how to handle a rookie quarterback, or our expectations for him.
- We’re using the wrong phrasing for Mahomes’ shortcomings.
1. Defending the average, for fear of the terrible.
Alex Smith is a perfectly good NFL quarterback. He’s somewhere in the 15-20 range among starting QBs in the league, he isn’t going to carry a team to a Super Bowl, and Andy Reid and John Dorsey/Brett Veach saw fit to draft his replacement this offseason.
Celebrating the bright spots of the future signalcaller is not an indictment on Alex Smith, and, frankly, Alex Smith does not need nor deserve to be defended as if he has Tom Brady’s track record or Aaron Rodgers’ talent. I’ve spent much of the preseason discussing Smith’s flaws and Mahomes’ strengths because that’s how quarterback analysis works. You have one guy (Smith) who has been in the league for a decade. I’m not going to tell you what Smith “might become” this season. He is Alex Smith. We know what he is. And I’m not going to harp on Mahomes’ problems, because rookie quarterbacks are evaluated on their tools and what makes them exceptional. Which brings me to the second point.
2. We don’t know how to handle a rookie quarterback.
Kansas City is, largely, really having a hard time with this whole “having a rookie quarterback” thing. Of course Mahomes is going to make rookie mistakes in his first run at NFL action. Those mistakes go hand-in-hand with the introduction of a young quarterback into the league. Those mistakes are not a good reason to put a stop to the hype train. Be excited about Patrick Mahomes. Look to the future. Be prepared for him to make rookie mistakes as a rookie. (For the record, “rookie” will still apply to Mahomes next season in his first year as an NFL starter.) That’s how this entire process works. As long as Mahomes is learning from his mistakes, I’m happy that he’s making them.
3. We’re using the wrong words to describe Patrick Mahomes.
What do you hear in conjunction with Patrick Mahomes? “Raw.” “Developmental.” “A project.”
That analysis, at this point, is lazy and wrong. Mahomes isn’t any of those things. He does have huge amounts of raw talent, but he isn’t some sort of unrefined mess. “A raw, developmental project” is what we said about Tyler Bray. Patrick Mahomes is so far beyond that level already.
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So what is Mahomes? He’s inexperienced. He’s spent a few months in the NFL, and one preseason game as an NFL starter. He isn’t currently ready to be an NFL starting quarterback because he has never been an NFL starting quarterback. See the catch? Eventually, be it this year, next year, or two years from now, Mahomes is going to have to take on his biggest drawback: the fact that he hasn’t been a starting signalcaller.
Now, that doesn’t mean that he can’t improve from a year behind the scenes. Matt Waldman (in the first podcast on this post) convinced me of several of the things Mahomes can improve on from the backup spot. But it isn’t a collection of your typical buzzwords.
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