Patrick Mahomes had one of the most prolific seasons in NFL history in his first year as a starter. Should Chiefs fans expect a regression in 2019?
The Kansas City Chiefs‘ Patrick Mahomes took the NFL by storm last season. In his first year as a starting NFL quarterback he put up video game like numbers that only a handful of quarterbacks in the history of the league have managed to produce. Naturally, Chiefs fans (like myself) are drooling over the seemingly limitless upside that Mahomes appears to have. After all, if he can put up one of the most prolific seasons in NFL history in his first year as a starter then just imagine what he’ll be able to do as he continues to grow and develop as a player. If you treat 2018 as his baseline then his potential ceiling would be better than any quarterback in the history of the NFL.
But is that really a fair expectation? Our own fearless leader Matt Conner dug into this topic last week.
I don’t think anyone believes that Patrick Mahomes isn’t the real deal. I don’t think anyone thinks that his numbers last season were a fluke and I’m certainly not writing this piece because I have any doubts about Mahomes going forward. Quite the opposite, I believe he has a chance to be one of the best quarterbacks of all time and as long as he remains a Kansas City Chief he gives them a fighting chance to win that coveted Super Bowl that I have not been able to see in my lifetime.
Despite that love and belief in Mahomes I still wonder if we as Chiefs fans need to brace ourselves for a regression (at least in stats) from last season. If you’ve forgotten just how amazing Mahomes was (I’m not sure how that’s possible) here are his numbers from 2018.
- 66% completion percentage
- 5,097 yards passing
- 318.6 yards passing/game
- 8.8 yards/attempt
- 50 touchdowns
- 12 interceptions
- 113.8 quarterback rating
Those numbers are insane. At just 23 years old Mahomes became just the third quarterback in NFL history to throw for 50 touchdowns in a season and one of just eight quarterbacks that have thrown for over 5,000 yards in a season. While I hope that Mahomes is able to replicate (or possibly even surpass) those numbers I believe it would be completely unprecedented for him to do so.
To support this thought I decided to look at six other quarterbacks that put up historically prolific seasons and see how each of them did the following season. Perhaps even more important to Chiefs fans, I also looked at how their teams did in those highly prolific seasons and then how they did the following year as well. Those quarterbacks/seasons were:
- Dan Marino in 1984
- Tom Brady in 2007
- Drew Brees in 2011
- Aaron Rodgers in 2011
- Peyton Manning in 2013
- Matt Ryan in 2016
Let’s start with the first quarterback on that list, Miami Dolphins legend Dan Marino.