Mahomes’ magical passing is changing the NFL
New York Mets third baseman Robin Ventura lofted a long fly ball, deep and high into the air.
Pat Mahomes’ teammates gasped. His 6-year-old son was standing in the outfield, running toward the ball.
A Mets player yelled for him to watch out, but Patrick Mahomes II kept running, his junior-sized mitt outstretched. He caught the ball.
For a 6-year-old, tracking and catching a ball off a major league All-Star’s bat seems improbable. But everything about Mahomes is improbable.
Sunday, the Kansas City Chiefs quarterback threw a 48-yard pass across his body on fourth-and-9 to keep the Chiefs in the game. The throw aided another fourth-quarter comeback as Kansas City clinched a playoff spot with a 27-24 win over the Baltimore Ravens.
Oh, and somewhere in between that pass and the overtime win, he added a no-look pass to his already ridiculous repertoire.
Mahomes misdirected a throw — on purpose — yet still threw the ball on a trajectory akin to a frozen rope. Suffice to say, the pass set the NFL’s Twitterverse on fire. Some compared him to NBA great Magic Johnson.
It was just Mahomes being Mahomes, though.
For the NFL, it might be the reckoning it needed.
Johnson changed the league with his size and incredible passing. He was the LeBron James of the 1980s.
Mahomes is changing the game in other ways, though, and doing it at breakneck speed. He is on pace to throw for 5,292 yards and 53 touchdowns. Both would rank in the top three all time. Peyton Manning set both records (5,477 yards and 55 TDs) at 37. Mahomes is 23.
And if you’re going to compare him to NBA stars, perhaps Steph Curry and James Harden are more accurate. While neither might ever ascend to the greatness of Magic, Harden and Curry changed the current landscape of the NBA, launching threes with reckless abandon from anywhere on the court. And sinking them. Their abilities (and a few rule changes) altered the entire offensive behavior of the NBA — something the Spurs are still struggling to adapt to,
among many other things.
Mahomes’ ability to extend a play is like a shooter stretching the floor — in Curry’s case to about 40 feet. His backyard style —where he’s making one off the cuff amazing play after another — is perfect for our social-mediadriven world.
Every week, Mahomes goes viral.
But the quarterback out of Texas Tech is much more than that. Mahomes’ pocket mobility isn’t based on pure speed such as former Atlanta Falcons great Michael Vick, who was clocked at 4.33 seconds in the 40-yard dash.
Mahomes isn’t close to that fast. He ran a 4.8 at the NFL combine. Good, but not game-changing.
Instead, Mahomes just has the innate ability to evade pass-rushers, reset his feet and then attempt the unimaginable. At times, he does look like Magic Johnson on a football field.
But the no-look pass? To me, it looked more like a play St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Famer Ozzie Smith would make.
And there is a good reason for that.
Mahomes grew up in Major League dugouts, watching his father, Pat, pitch for six Major League teams in 12 seasons. He has met Derek Jeter, been on the field at the World Series and even went back-and-forth hitting off a tee at Yankee Stadium with Alex Rodriguez.
Out of high school, the Detroit Tigers drafted Mahomes in the 37th round of the 2014 MLB draft.
And that’s the future his father saw for him, too. Never did he think his son would end up a candidate for NFL MVP in only his second season in the league.
Before Mahomes committed to play for the Red Raiders, Pat Mahomes sat in the car with his son and gave him the advice he thought he needed to hear.
“It was his junior year, and we were coming back from a recruiting trip to Texas, and he was being recruited there as a safety,” Mahomes said. “I told him, ‘Why don’t you give this football thing up? You know you’re not going play it in college or anything. You’re going to play either basketball or baseball. Why don’t you give it up?’ He said, ‘No dad, I’m just going to try one more year.’ ”
Mahomes didn’t listen his father’s or then-Texas coach Mack Brown’s advice.
“I told him, ‘That lets me know they don’t watch film,’ because that boy ain’t tackled nobody in two years,” Pat Mahomes said. “He can intercept the ball, but he wasn’t no safety for sure.”
He never played safety. But he did continue playing baseball at Texas Tech.
As a freshman, he played in one game. He walked every batter he faced — four in all.
He played football from there on out — even though Texas Tech’s much-maligned defense never afforded him a shot at a Big 12 title or the Heisman Trophy.
But Kansas City, though, has shown people outside of West Texas and the Big 12 just what they were missing when Mahomes was buried playing 11 a.m. games against the likes of Kansas and Iowa State on Fox Sports Southwest.
He then sat for a year in Kansas City, learning behind Alex Smith and working to correct his fiveand seven-step drops for the NFL.
That he landed with quarterback guru Andy Reid was great for both the Chiefs and Mahomes.
It has been less so, for the rest of the NFL.
“I pretty much just want to get picked on the right team,” Mahomes said before he was chosen with the 10th pick of the 2017 NFL Draft. “You can get picked late in the draft. You can get picked early. If you get put in the right situation to learn, you get to get better every single day. That’s what I like to do.”
He has done all of that and more. Baltimore entered Sunday’s game with the NFL’s best defense.
Mahomes made them look foolish.
The Chiefs’ win Sunday and Patriots’ loss means they can lock down another AFC West title and turn home field into a near formality with a win over the L.A. Chargers on Thursday.
Sure, the Chiefs need to play better on defense if they are going win their first Super Bowl in 49 years. Mahomes can’t cover everything.
He isn’t a safety, after all. But he might just be the next great NFL quarterback.