Mahomes shows wheels when it counts
Patrick Mahomes showed he’s nearly as dangerous with his legs as he is with his arm.
The Kansas City Chiefs’ star quarterback displayed his scrambling ability in a 23-20 overtime win over the Los Angeles Chargers on Sunday with his 21-yard run on third-and-20, setting up the game-tying field goal late in regulation.
In all, Mahomes converted four third downs with scrambles when the Chiefs needed at least 3 yards to go. The only other player since 1991 to convert that many third downs with at least 3 yards to go in a single game was Tennessee’s Vince Young, with six in Week 13 of the 2006 season against Indianapolis.
Mahomes ran more than 55 yards of total distance on the 21-yard run, according to NFL NextGen stats.
In all, Mahomes covered 962.2 yards of distance on the field during the game with his ability to scramble and move around the pocket to extend plays.
Nearly half of that distance — 455.2 yards — came in the fourth quarter and overtime. The last quarterback to cover that much ground in the fourth quarter and OT of a game was Arizona’s Kyler Murray in the 2019 opener against Detroit, according to NextGen stats.
NFC best
No division looks tougher after two weeks than the NFC West. Arizona, Seattle and the Rams have won their first two games, while defending NFC champion San Francisco is 1-1 with the loss coming to the Cardinals. This marks just the second time since the start of the eight-division format in 2002 that teams in a single division went 7-1 through two weeks.
The other time it happened was in the 2002 AFC West, when the Raiders, Broncos and Chargers all started 2-0 and the Chiefs were 1-1. The Raiders were the only one of those teams to make the playoffs that year.
Starting fast
Green Bay, Seattle and Las Vegas are among the teams off to fast starts this season, winning their first two games and scoring at least 34 points each time. In the past 25 seasons, 13 teams have done that, but it doesn’t always lead to great on-field success. While the 1996 Packers and 2009 Saints won the Super Bowl those seasons, four teams missed the playoffs entirely, including the Bengals two years ago. The 2007 Patriots and 2013 Broncos lost the Super Bowl after those starts, with five others losing earlier in the postseason.
Bizarro world
For years, the Raiders always have been among the most penalized teams in the NFL, leading to fans and some team members complaining of bias against late owner Al Davis. Those complaints have been silenced through the team’s first two weeks as the Las Vegas Raiders. Las Vegas has been penalized just six times, second-fewest in the NFL, and benefited from 15 penalties for 194 yards by their opponents, second-best in the league.
Blowing leads
The most dangerous lead for Detroit appears to be a double-digit one. The Lions blew a 14-3 lead at Green Bay in a 42-21 loss Sunday, their record-setting fourth straight game of blowing a lead of at least 10 points. Detroit squandered a 17point fourth-quarter advantage in the opener against Chicago and also blew big leads to Denver and Green Bay near the end of last season. The Lions have lost 11 in a row overall.
The Falcons had their own collapse Sunday, losing 40-39 to Dallas despite leading by 15 points with less than eight minutes to play.
There have been only two other games in the past nine seasons when a team blew a lead that big that late in the game. Washington blew a 15-point lead to New Orleans in 2017, and the Falcons did it in the Super Bowl following the 2016 season when New England rallied from 28-3 down to win in overtime. Atlanta led that game by 16 points with less than seven minutes to play.