Patrick Mahomes' high school highlights: absurdity in motion

What Mahomes did in high school should have had more scouts buzzing

Patrick Mahomes was considered the 12th best quarterback in the country coming out of high school.

That sounds absurd in retrospect, but it is an absolute truth. Check out his Rivals.com page (this is in no way a shot at Rivals, an excellent site).

Mahomes was given a “3-star” rating out of 5. His 5.7 “Rivals rating” means (under their definition) in part “… a player deemed to have mid to low-end pro potential and ability to impact at the college level.”

It wasn’t just Rivals that had Mahomes underrated. Mahomes was given 3 scholarship offers to play football coming out of high school, with Texas Tech being the most “big time” school offering. The Alabama’s and the LSU’s and the Clemson’s of the world missed on him. It was an enhanced preview of Mahomes’ being underrated by most coming out of college and entering the pros.

I’ve written at The Athletic how Mahomes’ college tape should serve as a warning for pro teams to not overthink things. However, the groupthink regarding how a prospect “should” look goes further than the pro game, and it affected Mahomes coming out of high school as well. I took the time to look at some of Mahomes’ high school tape/highlights, and frankly… it’s borderline indescribable.

So let’s talk about two things today: Mahomes being a talent that defies description as far back as his junior year of high school, and the reality that the traits he flashed should have been more than enough to convince colleges to bang down his door recruiting him. Because he did some truly absurd things in high school.

This is a sensible place to start, because it’s literally one of the best throws I’ve ever seen a quarterback make. Not just a high school quarterback. At any level.