Patrick Mahomes Is Still Very Much A Witch
When the Washington Football Team took a 13-10 lead over the 2-3 Kansas City Chiefs into halftime, you had people like this. The Chiefs, participants in each of the last two Super Bowls and the last three AFC Championship, got off to a terrible start, Mahomes’ impossibly low career turnover rate was starting to find a more human level, and the folks who have been waiting years for the other shoe to drop on this guy thought their moment finally arrived.
Thought.
21 second half points for the Chiefs, 397 yards through the air for Mahomes and another 31 on the ground en route to a resounding victory. All the bad faith takes crawled back into their caves, lurking in the shadows waiting for another day to rear their disingenuous heads. But for those of us who like sports and watching the world’s greatest athletes do absurd things, boy oh boy do I have a throw for you.
One thing that’s always bothered me about NFL stat keeping is that because this ball was snapped at the 50-yard line the box score only reflects that this was a 12-yard pitch and catch. Buddy threw this from his own 35, rolling to his right, across his body, perfectly in stride to the Football Team’s 38 and made it all look like the most casual stroll on the park on a crisp autumn morn that you ever did see.
Through six weeks, Mahomes is sporting the highest completion percentage of his career (69%) and is leading the NFL in TD passes with 18. After carrying a 1.0 INT% over the last two full seasons he’s jumped up to 3.3%, easily the worst of his career, raising his average to 1.7% which is… still lower than Tom Brady’s career mark of 1.8%. This was the Favre-esque gunslinger characteristic of his arm people were concerned about when he was coming out of Texas Tech. Only… what’s the concern? 51 starts, one ring, and an MVP later and it’s only just now coming up as they sit a game back of first place. I don’t want to do hot takes on a Monday afternoon, but it appears I have no choice: Patrick Mahomes is still good at sports. There. I said it. Hopefully you can manage to figure out how to have a decent day after having your Earth-view shattered.