Patrick Mahomes and Tyreek Hill rated as NFL’s 5th best QB-WR duo
Gil Brandt of NFL.com has released his list of the league’s top quarterback to wide receiver rankings in the league—and we are not impressed
NFL analyst Gil Brandt recently published his rankings for the top quarterback to wide receiver duos in the NFL and, to say the least, Kansas City Chiefs fans, it is a hot take.
Brandt ranked the Super Bowl LIV champion’s duo of Patrick Mahomes–Tyreek Hill duo as the fifth best combination in the league. In and of itself, that ranking is not completely absurd. It is theoretically possible, if you do not think too hard about it, to throw a dart and land the WASP duo somewhere around fifth. However, how the two came to be ranked so “low” in Brandt’s list is unfathomable.
Brandt ranked the New Orleans Saints pair of Michael Thomas and Drew Brees first on the list, which is at least a defensible position. There is a strong argument to be made that Brees is the second best quarterback in the NFL and Thomas is arguably the NFL’s top wideout. Brandt’s rankings fall off the rails after that.
Second on his list is the pairing of Atlanta Falcons wideout Julio Jones and quarterback Matt Ryan. That makes sense—in 2016. That year Ryan was the league MVP and Jones had 1,400 receiving yards coming off of a ridiculous 136 catch, 1,800 yard season in 2015. Now, the Falcons are coming off of two straight losing seasons. While you cannot blame the Jones-Ryan connection exclusively for it, it stands to reason that the second-best combo in the NFL should be playing winning football. While they remain prolific, the reality is their chemistry is no longer helping their team win at the pace it once was.
Even if you believe his second place ranking of the Falcons is correct, surely we can all get on board with agreeing that a one-year NFL starter paired with a receiver he’s never thrown a pass in a game to has no business being third on this list. And yet, Brandt ranks Kyler Murray and DeAndre Hopkins of the Arizona Cardinals as the third best combination in football. Yes, you read that correctly. According to Gil Brandt, the third best quarterback-receiver combo in the entire NFL has, thus far, gotten together for zero catches for zero yards and zero touchdowns together. For his part, Hopkins is one of the top five wideouts in the NFL. Murray, though, is not in the top five amongst NFL quarterbacks and you’d think that to make this list—and to be ranked third at that—you’d have to be a top five or ten player at your position.
The fourth overall position features another non-top five quarterback along with a similarly (dis)placed receiver in Dallas Cowboys duo Dak Prescott and Amari Cooper. They’ve been a good duo for 25 games and I’m not upset that they make Brandt’s top ten. They may even be in the top five. But, to argue that they’re ahead of Hill-Mahomes is borderline absurd. The pair have combined to win a total of one division title and one playoff game. Mahomes and Hill won a Super Bowl. This feels like a “nuff said” kind of moment.
The rest of Brandt’s top ten features two more duos that have never played together with quarterbacks who looked like shells of their former selves at times last year (Tom Brady and Mike Evans in Tampa Bay and Philip Rivers and T.Y. Hilton in Indianapolis). It also includes a criminally underrated duo from Green Bay with Aaron Rodgers and Davante Adams. Maybe all of those make the top ten, but the Detroit Lions pairing of Matthew Stafford and Kenny Golladay is, well, not impressive.
Perhaps the most shocking inclusion of all is the pairing of (this is not a typo) Ryan Tannehill and A.J. Brown. Tannehill and Brown are a nice pairing. They contributed to leading Tennessee to an AFC title game in January in just their first year as a combo. But anyone watching the playoffs knows that those wins came on the back of Derrick Henry; and when it came time for the passing game to pick up the pace in the second quarter of the AFC Championship, they simply could not do it. Including them in the top ten feels like Brandt just forgot about other teams.
Other duos that merit inclusion ahead of Tennessee’s combination include: San Francisco (Jimmy Garroppolo and Deebo Samuel), Seattle (Russ Wilson and Tyler Lockett or D.K. Metcalf), Los Angeles Rams (Jared Goff and Cooper Kupp or Robert Woods), and Buffalo (Josh Allen and John Brown).
Regardless of how you feel about the list in totality, we can all agree (probably) that Hill-Mahomes are under-valued in this particular ranking. There is a strong argument to be made that they are first, if only because the margin between Mahomes (as the top-ranked quarterback) and whomever your second choice on the list is so vast that, even if Hill is not a top three receiver on your board (as he should be), then you can still find yourself justifying the ranking. No other pair on the list has a Super Bowl Championship together, and certainly none has as defining a moment as the Chiefs do with Mahomes to Hill—WASP, 3rd and 15, down 10 with seven minutes left in the Super Bowl LIV to start a comeback that led to a world title.
Call us when another combo has a Super Bowl Championship on their resume. Until then, we’ll be over here, polishing the Lombardi.