Patrick Mahomes Week 9 film review; Better, boring, and a still-sputtering offense
Looking at every snap of a somewhat ho-hum game from the Chiefs quarterback and how the offense continued to struggle.
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.
If I were to pick a word that I would bet money NEVER describes a Patrick Mahomes performance, it would be “boring.”
That said, Week 9 was a somewhat boring week for the Chiefs quarterback. Against the Miami Dolphins, Kansas City’s offensive struggles continued, with the team only managing 14 points on that side of the ball. However, unlike Week 8, it wasn’t an utter disaster, and it wasn’t a bad Mahomes performance.
It was just… sorta boring. Even the good plays were mostly a matter of design and good execution rather than the usual fireworks.
Utilizing Kelce as a decoy in the red zone here, combined with McKinnon running a nice route, led to about as easy a touchdown as you’ll see from 15 yards out. However, it’s not a great demonstration of how the offense operated as a whole throughout the day (obviously, given the lack of points).
The good news? While there were still a few issues that we’ll discuss, Mahomes’ shaky Week 8 performance didn’t repeat itself and there were improvements (though it wasn’t close to his best effort).
That bad news? Despite Mahomes being perfectly “not bad” overall (again, a far cry from what we’d look for, but not bad) the offense still sputtered on multiple drives. So today, we’ll be looking at some of the issues that killed drives outside of Mahomes, which may lead us into some bye week questions as to what the Chiefs can do to get more consistency from the offensive side of the ball.
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)