Patrick Mahomes Week 11 film review; Help wanted
Looking at every snap of a performance in which Mahomes, aside from a couple of mistakes, was Mahomes, but the help was... lacking.
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 we get started, let me be clear on a couple of things to keep in mind during this week’s Mahomes film review. First, two things can be simultaneously true.
Second, Mahomes was quite good against the Eagles while having a couple of bad snaps that contributed to the loss.
Often, we want to have a clear black and white, one or the other. So if I say “Mahomes was largely let down by his teammates on Sunday,” one may be tempted to reply something like “well he threw a really bad pick.” To which my answer would be absolutely, yes, but he made many, many more good plays than bad plays and was not the primary driver of the Chiefs offense stalling by a long shot.
It’s worth understanding that by the very nature of football, perfect games are virtually nonexistent. The closest Mahomes has come was the 2021 divisional round against the Bills, or perhaps even last year’s Super Bowl or the 2020 evisceration of the Ravens. But even those games featured one or two bad snaps. Because in reality, actual literal perfection is impossible for 60 minutes by an NFL quarterback. Defenses are too good, and people (even aliens like Mahomes) are too human.
I say all this as a prelude to avoid sounding like an apologist when I say that Mahomes, by and large, did everything he could to help the Chiefs beat the Eagles.
After going back and reviewing each snap, I found a few uncomfortable common themes against the Eagles that I think are worth talking about. One of those themes, issues with the deep ball, I covered earlier this week. So let’s dive into the rest as we talk about how Mahomes himself played and where the questions (and hopefully answers) lie for the Chiefs.
If you’re looking for the previous weeks’ film reviews, you can find them here.
-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)
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