Patrick Mahomes Week 4 Film review; Weirdly... mortal

Examining a game in which Mahomes played for stretches like he'd been exposed to kryptonite.

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.

Patrick Mahomes’ excellence is something that has become the easiest thing in football to take for granted.

Seriously, think about it. Take out the highlights, the off-platform wizardry, and all the craziness that causes social media to explode. What makes Mahomes so special isn’t just that he’s great, it’s that he’s SO CONSISTENTLY great that it’s genuinely bizarre when he… isn’t.

After a torrid start Sunday, in which the Chiefs grabbed a 17-0 lead and looked to be on their way to their second laugher in a row, Mahomes had something that resembled an out of body experience on a few throws. That includes the absolutely inexplicable pick above (we’ll talk more about this play shortly). So what was going on? Why did the quarterback who is virtually never bad start to have issues? The only place with the answers, as usual, is the film.

Let’s talk about Patrick Mahomes against the Jets on a night where a lot of things were going wrong for the offense (not Isiah Pacheco, who was terrific, but the wide receivers and the offensive line struggled). Because in a major shift from the norm, Mahomes was… part of the problem.

If you’re looking for the previous weeks’ film reviews, you can find them here.

-Week 1 (which lays out the terms and methodology)

-Week 2

-Week 3 (no article, but the numbers are there in a week he was virtually flawless)