With Alex Smith on his way to Washington, it is now officially Patrick Mahomes the second’s team. Let’s take a look at what to expect in the coming 2018 season for the Kansas City Chiefs. One question that has arisen: is Patrick Mahomes II ready? I hope to address that question by sharing a Brian Baldinger Instant Playbook breakdown of Patrick Mahomes. To understand further what we might expect from Patrick Mahomes II, we may do well to compare and contrast his skills to those of the previous man to hold his position: Alex Smith.
Running: when Alex Smith would break the pocket and run with the ball, he’d often do that to advance the ball downfield. This may be the one area where Alex Smith’s potential is greater than Patrick Mahomes. Smith’s 40 time was 4.78 coming out of Utah while Mahomes 40 time was 4.80 when he came out of Texas Tech. While Smith may have a slight edge in straight line speed, he runs to move the chains. Yes, he’s good at doing that, often very good, but he rarely runs to break out of the pocket and stay behind the line of scrimmage so that he can locate an open WR downfield. That, is where Patick Mahomes has a great edge. Mahomes will escape the pocket — Russel Wilson style — to keep the play alive with the idea of keeping a big play possibility alive.
Escapability: this is where Chiefs fans can expect to find big-play-magic… or high-INT-drama. While Alex Smith would rarely escape to keep a passing play alive, Patrick Mahomes does that on a regular basis. Sometimes to a fault. In other words, Mahomes will leave the pocket early — or before he has to — just like Smith will leave the pocket before he has to in order to pick up yards with his feet, but when Mahomes does it, this allows him to get out in space behind the line of scrimmage to use his exceptional field vision and connect with a WR who has moved to an open spot in the coverage. This can lead 2PM to making big plays or… throwing into coverage. So far, he’s done well connecting with his WRs.
Utilization of Wide Receivers: here Mahomes gets a big bump over Smith because he’ll use his knowledge of the primary routes and secondary targets, to allow his arm to do the rest. Smith will often bail on a play if he doesn’t find the primary WR open. Not always but when he does find the secondary WR he has only learned in the past two years to “throw-them-open” which shows confidence in his WRs to make a play. This is where Smith has garnered the “Game manager” moniker which he has come to not deserve, but exists none-the-less. I believe that 2PM’s extended dependence upon, and trust in, his WRs will promote more offensive unity and collaboration ultimately making the offense a stronger unit.
Risking: Because Alex Sith is less inclined to “throw-them-open” or take a shot downfield, he has often only thrown the ball to WRs who are already open, as mentioned above. Mahomes takes risks and relies on his arm strength to get the ball where he wants. If Mahomes “thinks” it’s a possibility, he trust’s his arm to make it happen.
Footwork: Alex Smith has used his footwork to make his throws and is very good at setting his feet to make accurate throws. Patrick Mahomes relies on his big arm to throw from many different angels and often gets his feet and body in strange positions prior to releasing the ball. While Smith may get a higher grade currently, Mahomes is able to complete his throws due to a high athletic ability and it may be part of what reminds many fans of Brett Favre: the ability to throw from many different angels to make what looks like astounding completions. Consequently, as time goes by, Mahomes may end up with the higher grade than Smith.
What We Don’t Know
Patrick Mahomes has lifted himself to the this position of becoming the Kansas City Chiefs quarterback and offensive team leader but we don’t know a lot about him. For instance, he played on bad teams at Texas Tech, teams that would get so far behind that he couldn’t catch up.
When his Tech Tech Red Raiders visited the Kansas State Wildcats on Oct. 8, 2016, his team played from one score behind from half way through the first half and eventually lost 38-44. Although Mahomes brought his team back down the field to make the score score 38-to-44 with 0:0:5 left on the clock, it was too little too late. So, we don’t have a record of past “come-from-behind” victories to rely upon which could inform us that Mahomes is capable of such feats. Not to say he can’t do it, but that question remains. Sure, he brought the team back to beat the Broncos in the last game of the 2017 regular season, but their defense was not at full strength so it will be interesting to see if 2PM has that late game fire.
Many rookies — and I’ve heard Mahomes called a pseudo-rookie, so I’ll go with that — have trouble picking up the blitz. There are plenty of teams in the NFL that run exotic blitz packages and even more DCs who know how to get to an inexperienced QB. So, it’ll take some time before we know how Patrick Mahomes handles that. In the meantime, don’t expect many miracles when other teams blitz.
The other area that we don’t know about yet is, production. However, even if this was Dan Marino coming into the league here, we still wouldn’t know about what his “production” might be (in fact, when Dan Marino came into the league in 1983, teams like the Steelers and the Chiefs marked him down for some reason and he fell to the Miami Dolphins at #27, while Pittsburgh took a DT at #21 and the Chiefs took QB Todd Blackledge at #7).
What we can expect is a lot of highlights. Probably the kind of highlights that Brian Baldinger has compiled here. Baldinger believes Mahomes is ready to start now:
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