Patrick Mahomes AFC Championship film review; Playing it safe plus whatever it takes
Looking at every dropback by the Chiefs' quarterback against the Ravens. He continues to be on an absolute tear.
You know the drill. Every week (well, most weeks) I’ll be charting every dropback by Patrick Mahomes this year, just like I’ve done for… well, his whole career. As I laid out in the Week 1 film review (which is unlocked so you can see the methodology in more detail), statistical analysis of quarterbacks, especially in small sample sizes, doesn’t really tell us the whole story or even most of it. So I chart things that the QB can control, such as accuracy, pocket presence, franchise throws, going through reads, and more.
Before the playoffs started, one of the most common refrains we heard about the Chiefs offense was that because of all their flaws Patrick Mahomes would have to be perfect for them to succeed. It was said almost as a dismissal of the Chiefs’ chances, because what quarterback can make plays AND avoid mistakes at a rate necessary to be called “perfect?”
I suppose we should have known better. But here we are, three games later, and Kansas City is right back in the Super Bowl. Again. And while the Chiefs’ exceptional defense and fantastic coaching has played a big role, an equally large part has been the fact that Mahomes is on an absolute heater of near-perfect football. Even if the final score of 17-10 didn’t reflect that in the AFC Championship, it remained true against the Ravens. But his perfection against Baltimore looked a little different than what we’ve grown accustomed to in Kansas City.
After last year’s Super Bowl, I wrote about how Mahomes left almost no meat on the bone, playing mistake-free football while being creative when it was necessary. And the short story is that Mahomes has modified his game yet again this postseason to play in a similar fashion, only even more carefully to be sure to avoid mistakes. He’s adapted to the 2023-2024 iteration of the Chiefs and is playing some of the best ball of his life… in a way that allows the team to win slogfests that they’ve struggled with in the past.
Let’s talk about Mahomes, who is one game away from one of the greatest playoff runs I’ve ever seen, and what he did against the Ravens.
(In case you want to check out Mahomes’ prior film reviews, here you go. Yes, there’s no Week 14 or Week 17, I’m sorry!)
-Week 1 (UNLOCKED, lays out the terms and methodology)
-Week 3 (no article, but the numbers are there in a week he was virtually flawless)