Patrick Mahomes falls to third overall in NFL’s quarterback index

The voters over at NFL.com’s weekly quarterback index removed Patrick Mahomes from his overall top spot and moved him down to third place overall.

Every week, four writers over at NFL.com—Ali Bhanpuri, Tom Blair, Gennaro Filice, and Dan Parr—take part in putting together the weekly quarterback index. In short, it’s a simple vote from each editor as to who they believe is the best quarterback in the NFL from one week to the next.

In the latest round of the QB index, everyone involved was in harmony on the idea that Patrick Mahomes no longer deserved the top spot in the National Football League as the best overall quarterback. Instead that title now belongs to Russell Wilson of the Seattle Seahawks.

After Wilson, the voters ranked Lamar Jackson of the Baltimore Ravens in second place and followed suit with Mahomes. Dak Prescott of the Dallas Cowboys and Aaron Rodgers of the Green Bay Packers round out the top five for Week 12. In fact, every single one of the voters had each of the top five quarterbacks listed the exact same way.

In some ways, the idea of Mahomes dropping after this week’s performance makes sense. The Chiefs offense certainly didn’t look the part of a unit that deserves some historic nickname on Monday. In fact, the Chiefs defense came up bigger than the offense when it came down to clutch performances in primetime. Frank Clark‘s dominance was more of a talking point than anything related to Mahomes for the game. Thus if QB index is simply rated on what happened in that particular game, it makes sense to drop Mahomes.

But here’s the thing: the QB index isn’t about re-ranking every NFL starting quarterback on each week’s performance. If so, there’s no way that Mahomes put up the third best performance overall. On Monday night, Mahomes completed 19 passes for 182 yards for 1 touchdown and 1 interception. No one would be able to tell that stat line apart from, say, a typical Eli Manning night. Therefore, if you’re going to make it a re-rank, then re-rank them completely. If you are solely judging quarterbacks on what they did the previous week, then drop Mahomes all the way to where he belongs (likely in the 20s for this past week).

If, on the other hand, the QB index is supposed to take in the quarterback’s body of work and list them as a true quarterback ranking (e.g. “Out of anyone, who do you want to start for your team more than others?”), then it doesn’t make any sense to put Mahomes anywhere other than No. 1. No one in their right mind would change their answer from Mahomes as the best starting quarterback in the NFL even after watching Monday Night Football.

Again, this is not a week-to-week re-ranking. Nor is this an MVP watch. In both of those instances, Mahomes would deserve to sit far lower in the instance of the former and right about where he’s at if it was the latter. Instead, it’s neither but somehow he’s been removed from his post at the top and all four NFL.com writers are in agreement here.