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Hard knocks of September forced Mahomes to rethink game
Speaking with reporters this past week, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes told a story from his rookie year of playoff lessons learned, how it’s hardly uncommon for one play to swing momentum so drastically that it dictates the outcome of a game and delivers a long offseason for the losing side.
The moment Mahomes chose occurred Jan. 6, 2018, in a wild-card game against the Tennessee Titans. As the backup to Alex Smith, Mahomes watched the Chiefs build a 21-3 halftime lead before that seismic shift occurredin the second half.
Marcus Mariota threw a pass Chiefs safety Jordan Lucas deflected, the Titans quarterback caught it and scored, and Tennessee rattled off the final 19 points of thegame to win, 22-21.
“You know one play can end your season or keep it going,” Mahomes said. “You try to limit your mistakes as much as possible, knowing it’s going to be a battle to the very end every single playoff game.”
Whenthe Chiefs look back on this season and any sort of similar lessons learned, the momentum changer won’t be as definitive as Mariota diving toward the pylon with Chiefs defenders displaying equal parts confusion and frustration.
What has happened with Mahomes is much larger in scope, the quarterback forced to adjust his game to work out of an early season funk when he was throwing interceptions at a dizzying rate. And bad news for the Steelers, it looks like Mahomes might’ve found a groove.
“He’s grown right before oureyes,” Chiefs coach Andy Reid said of Mahomes, who has completed 67.6% of his passes for 2,305 yards and 17 touchdowns against just three interceptions (with an
average quarterback rating of 105.8) over the past eight games.
While it’s impossible to pinpoint exactly when Mahomes broke out of his slump, let’s start by tracing backto Week 12.
From 2019-20, Mahomes threw just 11 interceptions while totaling 64 touchdown passes. Yet he already had matched that number through the Chiefs’ first 11 games.
Like any sort of mechanical or tactical tweak, the change for Mahomes didn’t happen overnight. But there might’ve been some substantive progress made the week before that 11th pick, when Mahomes completed 35 of 50 passes for 406 yards and five touchdowns in a 41-14 dismantling of the Raiders Nov. 14.
Over the past five weeks, Mahomes has been flat-out ridiculous, completing 70.6% of his passes for 1,455 yards to go along with 12 touchdowns andjust one interception.
“You’re always learning as a football player or coach,” Reid said. “So it’s been a good year for him that way. He’s really turned out some pretty good numbers and wins and all those things, so he’s had a goodyear.”
Ironically, the biggest part
ofhow Mahomes has evolved has been doing less. In baseball terms, he has gone from ahome run hitter to someone who’s seemingly more comfortable taking walks or using the opposite field — taking what he’s given rather thanforcing things.
For so much of his career, Mahomes was a wunderkind, his electric right arm and unique style sparking a Kansas City offense that could not be stopped. The 26year-old Texas Tech product also thrived against the blitz, a testament to his arm strength, smarts and athletic ability.
But then something funny happened: Teams stopped blitzing. They kept two safeties deep, retreated into what’s often described as a shell defense and waited for Mahomes to get greedy and make a mistake. Early on, he did.Lately, he has not.
The home run hitting ability, meanwhile, has remained, with Mahomes able to better recognize the times whereit’s OK to swing for the fences.
“We’ve had to learn that,” Mahomes said of staying patient and taking higher-percentage completions underneath. “I think that’s one of the biggest things this season. We’ve always been this big-play team that’s had short drives in under three minutes, whatever it is. With the way defenses are playing us, you have to learn how to take the short stuff and do these long drives. I think it’s made us better because we can always have the big plays.
“Ifwecanshoweverybody that we can drive down the field methodically with patience, that will be hard for defensesto stop.”
Mahomestaking more of a methodical approach has led to the Chiefs possessing the ball for an average of 32:53 over the past three games (fifth in the NFL) compared to just 30:51 through their first 11, a figure that ranked 13th.
Meanwhile, the revamped attack — whether with wide receivers Tyreek Hill, Byron Pringle or Demarcus Robinson or even tight end Travis Kelce — has been a big reason Kansas City won 9 of 10 down the stretch, averaging 29points per game.
What Mahomes has done and experienced led Reid to compare him to Ben Roethlisberger — winning and finding stardom early, maturing a lot by becoming a dad and also adjusting his style.
Although it’s not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison, remember Roethlisberger threw 23 interceptions in 2006 but cut that number to 11 the following year while upping his touchdownsfrom 18 to 32.
Maybe it’s a stretch, maybenot.
The lesson, though, is this: As much hype as quarterbacks routinely get — too much credit for things going good, too much blame when they go bad — it’s easy to forget that Mahomes is still just 26 and seemingly has found a wayto get better.
As unfortunate for the Steelersas that might be.