Patrick Mahomes report card: The MVP case begins right now
By Ian Wharton
Kansas City Chiefs star quarterback Patrick Mahomes dazzled against the Baltimore Ravens in Week 3. We have his full, weekly report card and analysis.
Everyone had one game circled in Week 3. The defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs traveled to face the other AFC heavyweight with the reigning MVP. The Baltimore Ravens never had a chance as Patrick Mahomes delivered his own MVP statement performance in their 34-20 win.
Throughout the 2020 season we’ll be tracking and grading quarterback Patrick Mahomes as we start chronicling one of the most talented passers of all time. The mesmerizing star is extremely unique with his intelligence, playmaking, flair and incredible arm talents. Even at 25 years old it’s clear we have the opportunity to see a full career of greatness.
Mahomes was dominant in the raw stats, with 31 completions, 385 yards and four touchdowns through the air. He added another 26 yards and one score on the ground. He exceeded any type of expectation there could’ve been for him.
We’re looking beyond the stat sheet to analyze Mahomes this season. I’ve been charting catchable passes for the last six years for collegiate quarterback prospects, and the results have brought solid baselines in key areas of accuracy to project NFL success. Mahomes benefitted from this, and the project is partially why I was so high on him as a prospect. We’ll be grading him on playmaking, decision-making, accuracy, efficiency, and awareness in addition to tracking his directional and situational passing effectiveness.
Playmaking: A
There’s a lot that goes into playmaking, including clutch play on conversion downs, red zone performance and the actual process of extending plays to find chunk gains downfield. Regardless of the exact definition, Mahomes aced the test of playmaking. He was good in the first two weeks but ramped up his play on the grand stage.
He made plays throughout the night while under pressure. He completed 16 of 20 passes for 202 yards and three touchdowns against the blitz. 11 of those throws were past the line of scrimmage, and that includes three throwaways. Just one of his actual pressured throws fell uncatchable.
Mahomes kept his eyes up and feet ready to move throughout the evening. Even though only three of his pressured throws came outside of the pocket, he was routinely maneuvering within the pocket to extend his window to get rid of the ball. He’s not traditional with his mechanics nor his style of playmaking.
The above video is a great example of red zone playmaking. Mahomes quickly opts to break the pocket to his weakside as Pernell McPhee breaks through, and it buys him several seconds to scan the field until another defender gets close. Sammy Watkins quickly cut back into the center of the field into space and converted a first down. Watch Mahomes’ arm angle drops and how his legs are mid-air as he releases the ball, but still delivers an accurate pass.
His running ability will never be on the level of Jackson’s dynamic legs but he repeatedly made the Ravens pay for their man coverage tendencies. His judgmental usage of scrambling and extending plays opened rushing lanes as defenders turned their backs in coverage, or bought time for his speedy playmakers to burst free.
Decision-Making: A+
The balance of Mahomes’ night from a decision-making standpoint was awe-inspiring. Only five of his passes were 20 yards or deeper if we take out throwaways. He was properly measured in taking risks and it paid off with an incredibly efficient and accurate night.
He avoided any interceptable throw or sack thanks to his decision-making on where to scramble and how he was reading the defense. His mental sharpness needed to be great to have a chance to win, but he was flawless and it led to a comfortable victory. The Ravens had no chance on Monday night.
His deep touchdown to Mecole Hardman was a good example of his decision-making process. Knowing that Marcus Peters is an aggressive cornerback who can jump underneath routes on occasion and that Peters has no chance at running with Hardman in a straight line even if he reads the route correctly, the double move was perfectly timed.
Peters jumped the underneath route and sprung Hardman to a wide open score. He delivered a dime in stride even as he was about to be walloped. The second angle on the replay also shows how he drifted away from the overloaded pressure from the defense to help buy him a little time.
Accuracy: A
The most fun of watching Mahomes every week is to see how many absurdly perfect and indefensible passes he can land. The highlights like this 20-yard touchdown pass to Tyreek Hill topped the list this week.
There’s nothing Peters can do here. Mahomes puts perfect trajectory on this ball as he goes over the shoulder with incredible touch. Hill needed to have his arms up after a small leap and the ball feathered into his grasp. The two make this incredibly difficult connection look too easy.
His accuracy went beyond the big plays too. Taking out his throwaways, 32 of his 39 total throws were catchable. One completion was lost to a drop, and I tallied Hardman’s tough one-handed near-touchdown before halftime as an uncatchable ball due to the difficulty of the catch.
14 of his 17 passes from 0-10 yards were catchable, and six of seven throws from 11-19 were on the money. This was nearly as clean of a performance we’re going to find the entire season.
His conversion downs are the only thing that kept him from reaching an A-plus. He missed both of his third down attempts beyond the marker on 3rd-and-short situations. This was a small complaint considering he was seven-of-seven beyond 3rd-and-5, including a touchdown, but only three of those passes were past the marker through the air.
It’s a nitpick, and overall this was a fantastic showing for the world’s No. 1 player.
Efficiency: A
His third-down playmaking was so good and devastating to the defense that I had to put three of the plays into one video to fit into this piece. Three times he crippled the Ravens’ efforts by extending plays delivering drive-changing throws. This decided the game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9AP2Fq36Ls
Each throw above has critical moments where one of Mahomes’ unique traits leads to success. The first had a crazy leaping pump-fake into scramble to the far-side of the field across pressure, and then a quick reset and off-balance delivery in stride.
The second sees Mahomes run into the pocket while his arm rears back to prepare for a quick throw. Watkins again finds space, and he gets upfield for a conversion into the red zone. This one is more subtle but his quick trigger to get the ball out with placement isn’t a given for most quarterbacks.
Finally he shows his touch again on an over-the-shoulder throw to Clyde Edwards-Helaire. He’s showing off with this attempt to start the second-half, as if this were NBA Jam and he’s on fire.
Awareness: A+
I mentioned situational awareness earlier under playmaking and we’re going to see it come up again here. Avoiding sacks and negative plays against an opportunistic defense like Baltimore’s is huge. The Ravens never had a chance because Mahomes avoided turnovers that would’ve spurred the opposition’s run game into a downhill sledgehammer.
Instead his biggest transgressions were a few misses due to coverage misreads or accuracy misses. He was constantly in control of his body, the situation and the offense. His ability to digest blitzes and coverages had to keep Don Martindale up all week dealing with heartburn.
He knows he’s going to get crushed by at least one defender but he makes the juice worth the squeeze as the Ravens closed the gap to only one score early in the fourth quarter. He delivered a good intermediate pass to Hill over the middle and into the Ravens’ territory.
This was essentially a one-play snapshot of how the evening went for the Ravens. This pressure cripples most quarterbacks in the league on any given play but Mahomes diced them up on almost every pressure sent. It was a masterful performance.
Mahomes’ MVP odds skyrocketed even as Russell Wilson continues to do similar magic out in Seattle. The Chiefs’ star raised his game when he knew he needed to the most and on primetime television. This will be a night not forgotten anytime soon for both of these teams.