Emmanuel Ogbah is good and other Chiefs lessons learned from Week 3
By Byron Smith
Patrick Mahomes shows his leadership
Where is Patrick Mahomes’ regression? Defenses are supposed to have enough film and intel on him to keep him from having the same success he had last season, so why is he on pace to best last year’s stats?
Mahomes is on pace for 53 touchdowns and 6,374 yards on the season after three games where the Chiefs had a large lead by halftime and Mahomes barely had to play through the fourth quarter. Why can nobody stop this man? The primary reason Mahomes continues to dominate games he is in was on display on Sunday: his on-field leadership.
When Mahomes speaks, the team listens. The line makes the proper adjustment to account for the pressure. The receivers know to watch him as the play progresses to see what read he has on the defense. Probably the opportunity to see this most prominently came in Kansas City’s last drive of the first half.
Kansas City had the ball with less than two minutes on the clock and only one timeout. Thanks to a hold by Mitchell Schwartz, the offense is on Baltimore’s 37 which is right outside of Mahomes average touchdown range (36 yards). Mahomes tosses a pass to Sammy Watkins for 13 yards and starts hurrying the team to the line to try and snap the ball to preserve time and get a shot a proper shot at the end zone. Due to some players not hustling to the ball, Andy Reid is forced to call his last timeout and send Butker out to kick the field goal.
In the moments after these, Mahomes showed his displeasure with the lack of hustle by the offense in that moment, even going so far as to talk to several of the players who were not up on the line in time. These players clearly listened since the offense hustled to the ball every chance they got from there on out—which you could clearly see when the players got up on the line for a fourth down play in the first drive of the second half..
(This is a great video looking at some film that really helps show what else Mahomes is doing to put up record numbers. Really just a great channel that puts up film room style videos.)