Patrick Mahomes' Week 5 Review: Good news and bad news
Upon further review, Mahomes' performance had positive and negative things to take away, as did the offense as a whole.
Seeing Patrick Mahomes play a relatively poor game is almost a bizarre experience.
Having watched Mahomes play in over 50 games over the course of the last 3 seasons, the expectation of him is for excellence, and it’s an expectation he nearly always delivers on. And even when he falls short of his normal casual dominance, he still plays at a level well above that of most quarterbacks. It’s been one of the most reliable things in the NFL since Week 1 of the 2018 season.
That’s what made last Sunday’s game against the Bills feel so strange. The Chiefs have lost games before, but it always felt like it was in spite of Mahomes’ heroics. He had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to defeat. Instead, against Buffalo Mahomes felt like he was a bit… part of the problem?
I say that with a question mark because, again, it’s a truly bizarre thing to say. But that’s how it appeared on first viewing, and it’s the narrative that has stuck throughout the week (Cover 2 is now the new “thing that stops Mahomes,” replacing the previous talk of man coverage, cover 3 shells, and zone blitzes while stacking the line of scrimmage).
Of course, what we think we see on first view can be deceiving. Emotion tends to cloud judgment, and our memories deceive us. That’s the entire reason I do what I do here, charting every snap to see exactly what occurred. And doing so for Mahomes revealed some good news as well as some bad news. Let’s talk about that.
If you are unfamiliar with how I chart and write about quarterback play, the Week 1 review explains the methodology and reasoning, as well as the definitions used. The goal, as ever, is to separate the QB 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:
Week 4 film review (one of the best performances of his career)
Let’s look at the numbers, then talk about what Week 5 brought.