Patrick Mahomes Week 3 film review; Better than advertised, work to do elsewhere
The Chiefs' QB, upon a closer look, held up well under rough circumstances while problems elsewhere set the offense back repeatedly.
Each week here, I’ll be reviewing every snap by Patrick Mahomes, charting things that gauge quarterback performance and measuring traits like accuracy, pocket presence, vision/awareness, playmaking, and ball protection. The idea is to quantify how the quarterback played beyond the box score and contextualize his play from supporting cast and scheme. You can find the terms and methodology here.
I’ll make this short and sweet, since you waited an extra day or two for it; Mahomes was better than you think he was on Sunday against the Colts. Probably, at least.
Given the paltry offensive output (17 points) and the numerous failed plays that plagued the Chiefs against Indianapolis, that might sounds silly. After all, could a quarterback play well when an offense has such an anemic performance? Even when I was churning through the failed plays I found Mahomes at fault on several of them. So how could he possibly have been better than you think?
Well, I suppose I’m guessing a little. Because upon looking at each snap, he was better than I thought he’d been. Which one can take as both good news (Mahomes didn’t forget how to play QB well) and bad news (when there are enough problems elsewhere to torpedo a decent Mahomes performance, that’s not a great sign). But the film says what it says, at least by my charting. And sometimes, all it takes is one consistent issue and really poor timing for another (pass protection and drops, but we’ll talk about that shortly) to derail an offense’s total output. But it’s important we talk about it so we can learn what really occurred.
So like every week, let’s talk Mahomes’ film. If you are unfamiliar with how I chart and write about quarterback play, the (unlocked) Week 1 review explains the methodology and reasoning, as well as the definitions used. The goal, as ever, is to separate the QB’s play from what is around the QB to get a better gauge on how he did on his own. You can find the previous views by clicking the links below:
This one will be a bit abbreviated, and we’ll just get right into the meet of it.