Given what it was, where it was, who it came against, how it went down and when it happened, there should have been more fuss made.
That there wasn’t, well, that’s Patrick Mahomes‘ own fault.
Against Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers last Sunday night, Mahomes turned in a performance of such sparkle that it should have spawned at least four blockbuster talking points fit for open discussion, taking us all the way through to now, the midpoint of the subsequent week.
Getting revenge on the team that beat you in a Super Bowl? That’s a spectacular story. Doing so on the very field where the aforementioned defeat happened? That’s a delicious narrative, too. Outdueling the greatest quarterback in history and getting appropriate props from TB12? Hmm, yeah, good for a headline or two.
Doing so with an incredible touchdown move that mingled poetry and force, with a bit of basketball and ballet thrown in — that’ll get some attention. Truth be told, it was about the only part that dominated the gossip-sphere.
And here’s why. As mentioned before, it’s Mahomes himself who is to blame. He’s too good, too often, for it to be exceptionally noteworthy when he does it again. The nuts and bolts of a prime-time masterpiece by an excellent team against a fellow potential Super Bowl contender, that part of it was largely ignored.
The highlight reel stuff, most notably the impudent TD toss to Clyde Edwards-Helaire that was the scramble of all scrambles, got everyone excited, much more than all the other plotlines combined.
For the regular season has become a kind of blank canvas for Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs, with no shortage of enjoyable entertainment. And, if we’re being honest, absolutely no drama.
That isn’t a criticism, for how could it be? It’s just the way it is.
Up to a certain, critical point, sometime in January, the football public knows what is going to happen. No one is questioning whether the Chiefs are going to make the playoffs. No one is confidently asserting they’ll lose their status as the kings of the AFC West. Or doubting they’ll go into the postseason with a high seed as one of the favorites.
Patrick Mahomes bests Tom Brady in Week 4
Nick Wright calls for everyone to admit Patrick Mahomes looks like the best QB in the league, better than Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers.
Or that they’ll win a couple of postseason games and give themselves yet another chance to add a second ring to Mahomes’ collection.
That’s when the drama will come, for drama requires doubt. In the gauntlet of the playoffs, Mahomes has Impressed, mightily so at times. Single-handedly, he has changed the very concept of time. Thirteen seconds will never feel like “game over” again, even though, if he’s not on the field, it almost certainly is.
But he has also, occasionally, shown himself to be fallible. Just here and there, not for long, just enough to keep his tally of titles at one.
So it’s a waiting game. Each week offers a chance to play and shine and ad-lib and experiment, all while in a weird kind of holding pattern.
It is at a point where even the most resounding victory, bulkiest stat line or most complete performance won’t tell us something we don’t know.
“The (Chiefs) are certainly, and clearly, and unequivocally, and inarguably, the best team and the favorites in the big, bad AFC,” said FS1’s Nick Wright on “First Things First.” “So, yeah, that team, with that quarterback, and that coach (Andy Reid, and that championship pedigree) — dare I say — is the best team in the NFL.”
At times, Mahomes does things that are as close to poetry as football can get. That quirkily brilliant TD that’s been replayed a zillion times already, with its 39 yards of scrambling, a spin move and a point guard toss showed that for Mahomes, this warp-speed maelstrom of a sport is somehow played in slo-mo.
And yet, even then, it didn’t come as a surprise. Least of all to Mahomes himself.
“I was going to run for it and then kind of flew around,” Mahomes told reporters. “And I realized I wasn’t going to make it and I saw Clyde. So I just kind of flipped it up to him.”
Just like that. Business as normal. Regular-season dominance — and innovation — are seemingly assured once more. Elite-level play is taken for granted so much that the only public shock is if there is a Chiefs game where it doesn’t happen.
Each challenge feeling like a minor obstacle to be overcome — the next being the Las Vegas Raiders next Monday night.
Watching, waiting, until the bigger hurdles arrive. When the only appropriate question related to Mahomes will come into view again: if, and when, he gets a second ring.
