Patrick Mahomes and the false ‘big game’ narrative

Some talking heads accuse Patrick Mahomes of not being able to win the big game and the narrative is not only asinine but lazy.

Peyton Manning threw 28 interceptions in his first season. Steve Young spent two awful seasons in Tampa Bay, squandering the promise of his USFL years, before spending another five coming off the bench behind Joe Montana in San Francisco. Even Tom Brady spent the first part of his career doing some high-level game managing and riding a top defense to Super Bowls.

Patrick Mahomes is only 15 starts into his career. He has 45 touchdowns to go along with over 4,800 yards passing. His won-loss record is 12-3.

Unfortunately, that 3 in the loss column isn’t a 0, and that’s been just enough ammo for some to already have begun crafting the laughable angle that Mahomes can’t get it done in “big games”.

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Last week, I touched on the Baylessization of sports talk show personalities and how it relates to the double-edged sword of social media fighting to both build up and tear down Mahomes. If the positing of deliberately wrong hot takes is the sports talk version of playing the heel, the creation and sustaining of narratives is the sports talk equivalent of professional wrestling as a whole. After all, to be able to reliably mask your shouting match as a legitimate debate, or your extended troll as a nuanced critique, you’re gonna need some easily digestible storylines to keep the audience buying what you’re selling.

The storyline some (read: Cowherd) are trying to use to chip away at the already-built-in-our-hearts statue of Mahomes is that he gets outplayed in big games by better quarterbacks. In the big moments, he shrinks. He’s carried by his coach, his system, and his supporting cast. He’s fun to watch, but he isn’t truly great. All style, no substance.

It’s honestly exhausting. Sports talk could be so much better than this. It should be so much better than this. You know what’s worse than giving stupid people a platform as big as, say, Colin Cowherd’s? Giving someone as smart as Colin Cowherd the platform to pretend to be stupid. It’s easy. It’s lazy.

Take K.C.’s three losses suffered under Mahomes tenure so far: New England and both L.A. teams. Against the Patriots, Tom Brady was the last one with the ball so they won. You can’t fault a quarterback for putting his team in position to take a game into overtime only for the defense to allow a drive for the game-winning field goal in the final minutes.

Against the Rams, Mahomes had two ugly interceptions late and five turnovers overall. But he also had six touchdowns and was the man under center for the first-ever NFL team to score over 50 points and lose. Not something to be particularly proud of, but also not indicative of a loss that’s the quarterback’s fault.

The Chiefs’ most recent loss saw the Chargers score 15 points within the last five minutes of the game. Now, yes, the offense had to stall late for that to happen, but when you take into account the sheer unlikelihood of a defense giving up those 15 points in such little time at the end of a game, it’s yet again not a loss that can be squarely pinned on Mahomes (allegedly) choking under pressure.

These hosts and analysts watch the games, and when they don’t, by nature of their job, they have unfettered access to every piece of film, every advanced metric, and every bit of historical data imaginable. All that film and all of that data scream at the top of their lungs that Patrick Mahomes is objectively great. It shouldn’t be a discussion. But it has to be a discussion, because without it these highly paid trolls would have to actually contextualize their points, rather than just construct the fake argument that’ll get them the most play on Twitter.

In an ideal world, sports talk is above the petty, biased, tribalistic squabbling of rival fan bases. Don’t get me wrong, the trash talking and deep-seated hatred of athletic rivalries are important to the continued success of sports both culturally and as a business. But fandom isn’t analysis, and tired, recycled narratives are not a substitute for giving proper context and framing for the world’s greatest athletes.

Which isn’t to say Mahomes has it that bad. Still, it’s telling that even in the face of his obvious excellence there’s still a need to invent a devil’s advocate position on him. Mahomes having three primetime losses in his first season as a starter isn’t any more an indicator of who he is or who he will be more than Manning’s 28 rookie INTs, Young’s disastrous first two NFL seasons in Tampa Bay, or Brady’s pre-Moss career. I wonder if Indianapolis would’ve felt pressure to bail on Manning after his rookie season in this climate of normalized overreaction

Here’s the reality; Patrick Mahomes will not play in a “big game” until the playoffs, and even then, there won’t be a lot of real pressure to win. The Patriots game wasn’t big. The Rams game wasn’t big. The Chargers game wasn’t big. The Chiefs have won big in the regular season in the past—none of it really matters. When you’re a shoo-in playoff team, it takes a bit of weight off of the regular season. When you’re a shoo-in playoff team that was supposed in a year of transition, you’re playing with house money. That’s where Mahomes and the Chiefs are in 2018.

Because, again, this is still Mahomes’ first year as a starter. He’s going to continue to make mistakes, though not nearly at the rate most reasonably expected to come into the season. He’s regularly proven he doesn’t make the same mistake twice, and he’s developing into a top-tier quarterback at a rate that’s honestly mind-boggling. Without exaggeration, he’s picking up little details in his game—from looking off defenders to mastering the hard count to pre-snap adjustments—that you’d expect from a five-year veteran. Oh, and he’s likely going to finish the season with over 5,000 yards passing and 50 TDs. But, you know, he’s got those three primetime losses, so how good is he really?

Am I preaching to the choir here? Yes, but the choir is all I have. Is continuing to complain about hot take culture self-defeating, as criticism is exactly what these sports talk personalities want? On the surface, yes. But in my own arrogant little world, I’m on a Will McAvoy-ian mission to civilize—one little bit at a time. Deep down, you have to have some delusions of grandeur to believe you can be a writer; consider this one of mine.