I remember Patrick Mahomes’ first week 1 start against the Chargers in 2018.
Watching him, I remember thinking “this is supernatural”. It was how I imagine people felt when The Beatles released Sgt Peppers: I couldn’t tell if I was more confused, amazed, or scared.
It was like he was playing quarterback from the future. He had Matt Stafford style crazy arm angles, but with Randall Cunningham movement abilities and a rocket ship attached to his right shoulder.
The ball just exploded out of his hand. The pass catchers exploded with the ball in their hands. This was a team built on explosiveness. It was fireworks.
Between Mahomes, then Kelce and Hill catching his passes, and an option based run and pass game that thrived out of the gun, the Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes dominated the league.
Seven years later, things have changed.
After a disappointing season, the Chiefs entered last week needing a miracle to make the playoffs. They ended up with Patrick Mahomes tearing his ACL as he tried to create out of the pocket yet again because there was nothing open.
It was emblematic of a team that shifted from being built around a superstar quarterback, to a team that became nothing more than a superstar quarterback, and he couldn’t carry them any longer.
Why?
There are a few reasons. The first, clearly, is defences.
As offences spread out, partly inspired by Andy Reid and Mahomes, defences started to play a lot of two-high cloud coverages and generally got lighter, daring teams to get under centre and run the ball against them. The Chiefs are rarely under centre because they have Mahomes and, despite a very expensive offensive line, don’t run the ball well.
Another is age and attrition, especially as the team has gotten more expensive.
But the one I want to focus on is a symptom of the first two. It’s the lack of winners outside of Mahomes, and how reliant the Chiefs are on genius from star players or once great coaches.
That brings me back to 2018. Again and again, Mahomes fit the ball into tight windows and it was caught by Kelce, or Hill, or even Sammy Watkins. Mahomes had the ability to fit it in there and, crucially, his guys could go and get a bucket.
There’s nobody on the team like that anymore. There are no winners. There’s no low effort plays for Mahomes. You can feel it in the numbers. The Chiefs are successful on 49.8% of their drop backs, just ahead of the bombs away Dallas Cowboys, seventh in the league, because Mahomes is so good at dinking and dunking.
However, they are well behind the Cowboys in EPA/play because, unlike the Cowboys, there are no outside winners for the Chiefs.
The system is “Mahomes is awesome”. They’re running the Doug Collins “give it to [Mahomes] and everyone else get the f**k out of the way”.
Philip Rivers was able to be somewhat successful against the best defence in the NFL because the Colts have outside winners, a modern scheme and a great running game. The Colts have those easy buttons sewn into the fabric of the team like the Chiefs did in 2018.
If he got dropped into the 2025 Chiefs, it would have been catastrophic.
Because defences are so good, and are so aggressive and dictatorial, that explosive element is even more important so you can dictate to them. Offences now need to be Juan Manual Marquez style counterpunchers and the Chiefs just aren’t with this set of offensive talent.
This isn’t just in the passing game either. The Chiefs inability to look for, let alone find, a workable, explosive running game has impacted their ability to mesh with the modern game.
Every handoff to Kareem Hunt is an acknowledgement that, at best, this is a seven yard play. You can’t live like that in an NFL that has been built to stop the era you helped usher in seven years ago.
Even in movies, the great directors need easy buttons, but you only get them with great actors. Training the camera on Brad Pitt driving is an easy button, but it only works because he’s so compelling to watch. He can do the action, but having value in the quiet moments is critical too.
Tarantino gave himself easy buttons. Mahomes has none.
So, can they fix it?
Heading into next year they are $44m over the cap and have an injured quarterback, though I’m assuming he’ll play in week 1. Travis Kelce will likely retire and Mahomes has a nearly $80m cap hit that he won’t play on.
They’ll sort the money.
What they need, though, is a Buffalo Bills style reset year. They need to get queer-eyed.
After a 2024 where the Bills lost to the Chiefs, they were too expensive and remade their entire team outside of Josh Allen.
They cut key offensive contributors and became an under centre, heavy personnel, run based team who had a great quarterback, rather than relying on that great quarterback to do everything. They made Josh Allen part of the offence, rather than relying on him to be the whole thing.
The Chiefs need to do the same.
They need to invest schematically in a modern, north-south run game and get Mahomes comfortable under centre. Even if they lose talent on paper, they can remake their identity and make themselves sustainable.
They also, and this is what the Bills haven’t had, need a boundary receiver who can make plays on 50/50 balls for Mahomes. Maybe they can find one with what should be a pretty good pick in the upcoming draft.
Mahomes isn’t bad and doesn’t look to me like he’s lost anything. He just needs more support in a modern NFL that’s as much about easy buttons as it is having the great quarterback.