Chiefs Chronicles: Raider's Week & All the Stuff I Missed- 2024 Season Week 8
Where I've Been, What's Wrong With Mahomes & A Note For All The Haters, Raiders Week: Part 131, Patrick Mahomes is Phil Connors, Ups & Downs in Fake Football, & As Much More As I Have Time For!!!
Bill Murray couldn’t find me either. Groundhog Day ties in further down in the column. It will all make sense, I promise. Read on…
Where I've Been
In case you missed the note I posted to the Chiefs Chronicles chat explaining the lack of columns the last couple of weeks, here it is again:
“My Granny Patsy passed away a few hours ago and I am going to be taking care of her arrangements, in addition to writing her obituary. Because of these circumstances, Chiefs Chronicles will be delayed this week.”
The night she passed away I wrote a bit about her and our decades of Family Fun Fridays spent together. Here’s a link if you are at all interested:
I’m still working on her obituary and arrangements, but when I start feeling overwhelmed (this applies in every aspect of my life) my go-to move is to distract myself. It probably isn’t healthy, but it’s what I do and it’s working. Kind of.
There’s no better way to completely distract myself than to write a new Chiefs Chronicles- my “writing process” is all-consuming. Also, so much has happened with the team since the last column was published (Oct. 6th), that there’s a literal plethora of things to write about.
Distraction Mode engaged! And with that, let us begin.
The Chiefs are 6-0 but we’ve seen this look more often than we’d like
What's Wrong With Mahomes & A Note For All The Haters
(Note: I was tempted to write “NOTHING” and then move on to the next section, but that would just be lazy.)
Patrick Mahomes has an image problem at the moment. All of the haters out there (they seem to be almost infinite in number), in addition to the people who solely judge QB play by looking at stats or box scores (whom, oddly enough, are often also haters), see these numbers and pass judgement:
Patrick Mahomes Passing Totals against the 49ers:
Comp/Att: 16/27 for 154 yards with 0 TDs & 2 INTs
Patrick Mahomes Passing Totals 2024:
Comp/Att: 127/187 for 1389 yards with 6 TDs & 8 INTs
If you have the nerve to defend him by calling him a great quarterback or saying that he’s a difference maker in the biggest moments of any game, they reply by saying things like:
“You Chiefs apologists are all alike. Patrick Mahomes is terrible. If he had any other name on his jersey, he’d be riding the bench and the Chiefs would be looking to the 2025 NFL Draft for his replacement. Something is wrong with him and he’s washed up- but, to be clear, he was never that great to begin with. The reason the Chiefs are winning is their defense and the refs cheating for them. They don’t get every call but they always get them in key moments. The NFL is propping Mahomes and the Chiefs up because of Taylor Swift.” And on and on and on.
I’ve seen all of these things and more loudly spouted on social media by anti-Chiefs nation, and on sports shows by so-called “experts”. Here’s an example of noted Patriots-fan Chris Brockman from the Rich Eisen Show talking smack about Mahomes (Note: This isn’t the clip I wanted but I can’t imbed Instagram posts on Substack) and Rich Eisen’s hilarious response:
Watching Brockman talk and seeing that tension on his face when he’s attacking Mahomes makes me a little angry (mostly at his stubborn insistence that he’s right) but… it’s also kind of satisfying to see how twisted up the topic of Mahomes’ greatness makes him. I’m just not used to rooting for the villain.
Yet.
My response to the all of the haters?
Dominant players and dominant teams are mostly hated by fans of other teams. It just comes with the territory for historically great teams and players. Because the (insert the name of your favorite underachieving hometown team or player here) can’t beat Mahomes and the Chiefs, it must be the refs or the NFL is scripted or the Illuminati say it must be so or whatever. Excuses, excuses. Rooting for perennial losers seems to make some fans break with reality.
For everyone hating on Mahomes and the Chiefs, I’ll say this: I get it. Losing stinks. This is my 34th year as a Chiefs fan and I suffered through a lot of sports-related heartbreak and losing to get to this amazing point (The Golden Age of the Chiefs Dynasty) in Chiefs history.
It’s going to be hard, but you need to learn to accept your team’s losses like an adult. I know this might seem like an impossible ask. Based on the content, spelling, and sentence structure used in many of your comments, I’ve come to the conclusion that some of you will never be able to understand what I’m saying or why I’m saying it. Mostly, because these words are in print and not in the form of a 15-30 second, poorly edited video. Do you understand what I’m saying?
No. Alright. Moving on.
Juvenile name calling and accusations of favoritism for the Chiefs and/or cheating by the Chiefs/refs/NFL? Come on, now. Don’t be the person who blames everyone else for their problems. As the old saying goes: “If it seems like everyone you meet is a jerk, odds are you’re the jerk.” Or something to that effect.
Instead of attacking an obviously excellent team and player, take a hard look at your favorite team and demand better. Because you obviously aren’t getting it.
I will never get tired of Brady being ignored by Edelman
Apologies for the slight detour- I’m a little rusty.
Now to continue on the topic of what Patrick Mahomes is right now. Is he great? Is he terrible? Is it complicated? I heard Tom Brady say something relevant to the discussion during the Fox broadcast of the Chiefs game versus the Niners and thought it was worth sharing. Here it is (transcribed from the video), in case anyone missed it:
Tom Brady on Patrick Mahomes:
“As I continue to think about Patrick, it’s like: How do you evolve from being this MVP-caliber player, 50 touchdowns, which we saw earlier in his career, to now- the evolution to becoming the best winner in the NFL? Which is ultimately your job. It’s not stats. It’s winning- putting your team in a position to win every game. He does that.”
People can feel how they want to feel about Tom Brady (he irritates me less in the booth than he did on the field), but he knows something about winning a lot of football games and that makes his opinion on the value of Patrick Mahomes as a quarterback worth listening to.
It’s like I was telling a friend of mine recently (I looked everywhere for this comment and couldn’t find it, so I’m paraphrasing) after he complained that Mahomes’ stat lines aren’t as great as they used to be:
Patrick Mahomes doesn’t care about his stats as long as the team wins. That isn’t to say that he doesn’t want to keep getting better (you can tell by his press conference comments he does), it just seems to me that he wants to win Super Bowls (he’s nearly halfway to Brady’s 7 already!) much more than he wants to lead the league in passing yards, passer rating, and TDs.
In pursuit of that goal he will do what he has to do, in any conceivable way that he can do it. How you or I or the rest of the world feels about the way in which he goes about achieving that goal, doesn’t enter his mind for even a second.
I guarantee it.
He keeps telling everyone
In the 49ers game he threw two picks but also got a key first down with his feet, scored a rushing TD, and the Chiefs won. He’s happy with that result. He wants the offense to be better but he’ll gladly trade good stats for a win.
To contrast, if he were to throw for 452 yards with 5 TDs (plus 49 yards on the ground and a rushing TD) against the Raiders on Sunday but the Chiefs end up losing the game? All of those pretty stats won’t mean anything to him.
The math for Patrick Mahomes is simple:
WINS > everything else
The only thing “wrong” with Patrick Mahomes is that he prefers winning over stats. While that may suck for all of the fantasy football players who drafted him early (I’m looking at you, Kristopher😂🤣😂), as a Chiefs fan I’m ok with it.
In honor of Raiders Week, there’s only one more thing on this topic that I can think to say:
Can you believe that the Chiefs have played the Raiders 130 times? I remember a time when the wins for each side were almost identical. Thankfully, that time is long gone. Currently the Chiefs lead the series 75-55 with two ties (and we all know what ties are like).
This week, like I’ve done every other week (and will continue to do so until it happens), I predict that the Chiefs will win in a blowout (I define a blowout as a win by at least 3 scores or 17 points). The Saints and Niners games were the closest I’ve gotten to being correct so far and, if a few more things had gone the Chiefs’ way, my predictions could have easily been right.
My final score prediction is: Chiefs 45-10 over the Raiders
Lock that bad boy in!
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Patrick Mahomes is Phil Connors
The Gridiron Heights version of Mahomes thinks everything is easy
I was going to respond to Seth Keysor’s excellent article on Patrick Mahomes being a killer and had a funny thought on the matter.
You see, as I pondered the various clever things I could write in the article’s comments section (so that Seth would notice me and recommend Chiefs Chronicles to his millions of subscribers), it started me thinking more about Patrick Mahomes and his seemingly magical clutchness (spellcheck says “clutchness” isn’t a word and I don’t care- I just hit ‘add to dictionary’).
As my mind shuffled through all of the Mahomes knowledge and memories that make up a surprisingly large part of the clutter contained within, it suddenly occurred to me that some aspect of his attitude in big moments reminded me of someone I’d seen before. Since everything reminds me of something (usually TV, movie, or Simpsons/Futurama-related) I’ve seen before and my brain is endlessly trying to connect all the nonsense and pop culture together (think Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind when he's "cracking the code") it took me a little while to figure out who it was.
Here’s what I came up with: Patrick Mahomes’ attitude in any crucial game situation is the equivalent of Phil Connors in Groundhog Day at the precise moment he realizes exactly what the phrase “no tomorrow” means. Go ahead and watch it- I’ll wait.
When the situation looks unwinnable and the Chiefs need him the most, Patrick Mahomes is relaxed, laughing, and saying: “I’m not gonna live by their rules anymore.” It’s an easy thing to do when you already know what the outcome will be.
Whenever I watch Avengers: Endgame (it plays on TV a lot and I get drawn in) it never fails to crack me up that fantasy football guru Matthew Berry plays a S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent protecting the (secretly evil) Secretary of the World Security Council- Alexander Pierce (played by Robert Redford). Berry got the role because of his friendship with the Russo Brothers AKA the guys who directed the movie. Funnily enough, they originally became friends after playing in a fantasy football league together.
In my book, that counts as an “Up” in fantasy football.
Most of what’s happened to me since last I wrote, would be considered an “Up” in fantasy football, as well. In Week 5, I (using my Old Mother Hubbard team name) beat the Commish of our league (Brandon’s Bad Team) by 70 points. That was quite a whuppin’ and pretty sweet after my 1-3 start. The win put me at 2-3.
Then, as I do every week, I changed my team name. Here is my Week 6 name (chosen because my team is Chiefs heavy and they were on their bye and also because The Replacements is a pretty good Keanu Reeves football movie):
In Week 6, I defeated Jon’s team (Third and Long) by .96 points. Yes, you read that right. Less than a point. My team was terrible, but his was just a tiny bit worse. I felt fortunate to pick up the win over his higher ranked team. I kept my 6th place spot in the standings.
Name change time! For Week 7, I went with this (I have Colts WR Josh Downs and it’s that great song from Smokey and the Bandit! Plus, Burt Reynolds!):
My Week 7 matchup was with (Chiefs Chronicles subscriber) Warren’s team named Conquistadors. We were both 3-3 and a win would push me into the upper half of the league. He started QB Andy Dalton, who scored a measly 6.52 points. My QB (Lamar Jackson) got me a whopping 57.44 points! This should have been a laugher for me.
Unfortunately, my fantasy “Up” turned into a fantasy “Down” (it’s a common occurrence) because all four of my WRs (Tyreek Hill, Xavier Worthy, DeMario Douglas, and Josh Downs) along with my TE (That Guy on the Chiefs known as Taylor’s BF) got me a whopping 15.6 points. Combined! There was a way I could have won, but it would have involved benching my most reliable RB (Chuba Hubbard) and starting Tank Bigsby instead and I wouldn’t have done that.
That brings us up to today. In 12 hours the Chiefs will be playing the Raiders and a lot of my fantasy fortunes for the week are riding on my mega-blowout prediction coming true. Here’s hoping!
Here’s my team name/pic for Week 8:
Final Thoughts
One last thing on the Mahomes hate/doubt. The recent history of the NFL is littered with the bones of all the people who’ve doubted Patrick Mahomes. He’s someone who seems to need that hate/doubt (or 10 point deficits- it’s insane he’s never lost a game where he was down by 10 points) to kick him up from an above-average QB to MVPatrick.
The Chiefs are the last remaining undefeated team mostly because the Defense has been great and Patrick and the offense (they don’t quite deserve the capital ‘O’ yet) have done just enough to win each week.
Now the Chiefs have added DeAndre Hopkins and His Spider-Man Hands (I think there’s another prospective band name to add to the list!) to the offense. He should acclimate fairly quickly and his presence alone will help unlock Kelce and Worthy, IMO. These things will all help Patrick look (statistically) like the great QB we all know he is.
What happens, though, when everything clicks and he gets completely dialed in?
And he will get dialed in.
We shall see.
It has felt good to be back and focused on writing this week’s edition of Chiefs Chronicles. Didn’t have time for all the links and such this week, but maybe I will next time. Thanks for reading and, as always…
GO CHIEFS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Quick Note: Please don’t forget to support our sponsor Tyger Tea!
A morning cup of coffee, a good article and an amazing video of a patriots fan seething with anger when trying to discount Patrick Mahomes. Thanks, my day can now begin.
"The recent history of the NFL is littered with the bones of all the people who’ve doubted Patrick."
And people like myself, who have perpetually claimed that his success is based on his feet and not his arm, which therefore means that he was relying pretty hard on Hill and Kelce, have come out smelling like roses. Listen, I entirely agree that Patrick genuinely seems to care more about the Chiefs' legacy than his own, and that's good, because like you discussed, his individual legacy is suffering right now.
We've talked a lot about Patrick. I would not self-describe as a hater of his. You may describe me as one. I'm not sure, but here's the thing. Patrick Mahomes used to be a player who would generate negative EPA/Play in a game twice all season. Now he's generated negative EPA/Play twice already, and we're not halfway through his season yet. Points below expectation is putting your team in a position to lose. Patrick has done it twice. That's still not a lot, but Josh Allen has also done it just twice. Jayden Daniels hasn't done it at all.
When comparing QBs using wins, it's basically implying that it's Jayden Daniels' fault that he generated 0.21 EPA/Play in a loss to the Buccaneers, meanwhile Patrick generated -0.19 in a win over Cincinnati. Somehow despite Patrick playing so much worse than Jayden the end result still came down to the QBs in some way. I'm not buying it. This is what I like to call the Mahomes hypothetical (formerly the Brady hypothetical).
'Yes, Patrick played really badly, but if he would've HAD to play better then he would've played better.'
That's the crux of the disconnect. It's a hypothetical, meaning it's unverifiable and we can only have opinions on it. It's possible that if Brock Purdy had played better, then Patrick wouldn't have struggled so much against SF, but it's also possible that his defence carried him to the win.
My opinion is that football players are trying their best all the time, so the Mahomes (Brady) hypothetical is nonsense, but I've been around long enough to know that the majority believe that people like Tom and Patrick keep something in reserve for the fourth quarter, in an effort to make a fourth quarter comeback out of a potential blowout win. For some reason.
Such a line of reasoning doesn't make any sense to me. It's much easier for me to believe that Patrick is trying his hardest to score every time he touches the ball, and simply fails more than he used to. The reasons for this can be debated. My working theory is that, considering Patrick has always had trouble throwing into tight windows, a poor receiver group disproportionately affects him, with his aversion to throwing anywhere near any defenders explaining the extremely conservative playstyle he's adopted, and that playstyle explaining the really jagged downturn in results over the last two years. Other people have other theories, but nobody is denying that he's failing more than he ever used to.
My theory would suggest that as soon as he gets back to having one of the best supporting casts in the NFL like he used to have, his limited (in this context, limited means great but not elite. Poor only for a player of Patrick's stature) arm talent can go back to being masked by his exceptional feet and otherworldly ability to always find the open man. Other people's theories would suggest that MVPatrick is dead and never coming back.
Funnily enough given our prior interactions, I think I may have ended up on the sympathetic side of the Patrick Mahomes argument. Not as sympathetic as you are, but I don't openly claim to be so biased like you do, so that's standard. Despite my sympathies for Patrick, he's still not among the top of the top QBs in the NFL anymore until further notice. Put his numbers in a straight fight against Joe Burrow's numbers, and Patrick has no argument for winning that fight, and I've written articles admitting to being a Joe Burrow hater.
It really hurts to have to say things like that, because I love Patrick Mahomes. In the pre-Game Manager Mahomes days he was one of my favourite NFL players of all time. I'm going to give it until he gets an elite receiver (which DeAndre Hopkins is not) before I give up and admit the Patrick I loved is lost and gone forever, but it's been a long time since Patrick threw passes longer than the NFL average.
If it weren't for the snobbish media coverage that comes with being 2x defending champions right now, the Chiefs would be a fun team to root for. Scrappy underdogs that you just hope will keep riding the one possession game luck, with a QB who's clearly declined, but is still trying. They remind me of the Tampa Bay Lightning in the NHL, who went on a fabulous Cinderella run to try to win their third championship in a row that they get no credit for, because everybody so hated the Tampa Bay Lightning by that point.
Maybe if I switch to watching the games on mute, I can root for the Chiefs, and I can root for Patrick. That'd be fun. This comment actually made me sad. I did not expect to get such a feeling talking about Patrick Mahomes. I legitimately want him to be great again, and it sucks that he isn't right now.
A morning cup of coffee, a good article and an amazing video of a patriots fan seething with anger when trying to discount Patrick Mahomes. Thanks, my day can now begin.
"The recent history of the NFL is littered with the bones of all the people who’ve doubted Patrick."
And people like myself, who have perpetually claimed that his success is based on his feet and not his arm, which therefore means that he was relying pretty hard on Hill and Kelce, have come out smelling like roses. Listen, I entirely agree that Patrick genuinely seems to care more about the Chiefs' legacy than his own, and that's good, because like you discussed, his individual legacy is suffering right now.
We've talked a lot about Patrick. I would not self-describe as a hater of his. You may describe me as one. I'm not sure, but here's the thing. Patrick Mahomes used to be a player who would generate negative EPA/Play in a game twice all season. Now he's generated negative EPA/Play twice already, and we're not halfway through his season yet. Points below expectation is putting your team in a position to lose. Patrick has done it twice. That's still not a lot, but Josh Allen has also done it just twice. Jayden Daniels hasn't done it at all.
When comparing QBs using wins, it's basically implying that it's Jayden Daniels' fault that he generated 0.21 EPA/Play in a loss to the Buccaneers, meanwhile Patrick generated -0.19 in a win over Cincinnati. Somehow despite Patrick playing so much worse than Jayden the end result still came down to the QBs in some way. I'm not buying it. This is what I like to call the Mahomes hypothetical (formerly the Brady hypothetical).
'Yes, Patrick played really badly, but if he would've HAD to play better then he would've played better.'
That's the crux of the disconnect. It's a hypothetical, meaning it's unverifiable and we can only have opinions on it. It's possible that if Brock Purdy had played better, then Patrick wouldn't have struggled so much against SF, but it's also possible that his defence carried him to the win.
My opinion is that football players are trying their best all the time, so the Mahomes (Brady) hypothetical is nonsense, but I've been around long enough to know that the majority believe that people like Tom and Patrick keep something in reserve for the fourth quarter, in an effort to make a fourth quarter comeback out of a potential blowout win. For some reason.
Such a line of reasoning doesn't make any sense to me. It's much easier for me to believe that Patrick is trying his hardest to score every time he touches the ball, and simply fails more than he used to. The reasons for this can be debated. My working theory is that, considering Patrick has always had trouble throwing into tight windows, a poor receiver group disproportionately affects him, with his aversion to throwing anywhere near any defenders explaining the extremely conservative playstyle he's adopted, and that playstyle explaining the really jagged downturn in results over the last two years. Other people have other theories, but nobody is denying that he's failing more than he ever used to.
My theory would suggest that as soon as he gets back to having one of the best supporting casts in the NFL like he used to have, his limited (in this context, limited means great but not elite. Poor only for a player of Patrick's stature) arm talent can go back to being masked by his exceptional feet and otherworldly ability to always find the open man. Other people's theories would suggest that MVPatrick is dead and never coming back.
Funnily enough given our prior interactions, I think I may have ended up on the sympathetic side of the Patrick Mahomes argument. Not as sympathetic as you are, but I don't openly claim to be so biased like you do, so that's standard. Despite my sympathies for Patrick, he's still not among the top of the top QBs in the NFL anymore until further notice. Put his numbers in a straight fight against Joe Burrow's numbers, and Patrick has no argument for winning that fight, and I've written articles admitting to being a Joe Burrow hater.
It really hurts to have to say things like that, because I love Patrick Mahomes. In the pre-Game Manager Mahomes days he was one of my favourite NFL players of all time. I'm going to give it until he gets an elite receiver (which DeAndre Hopkins is not) before I give up and admit the Patrick I loved is lost and gone forever, but it's been a long time since Patrick threw passes longer than the NFL average.
If it weren't for the snobbish media coverage that comes with being 2x defending champions right now, the Chiefs would be a fun team to root for. Scrappy underdogs that you just hope will keep riding the one possession game luck, with a QB who's clearly declined, but is still trying. They remind me of the Tampa Bay Lightning in the NHL, who went on a fabulous Cinderella run to try to win their third championship in a row that they get no credit for, because everybody so hated the Tampa Bay Lightning by that point.
Maybe if I switch to watching the games on mute, I can root for the Chiefs, and I can root for Patrick. That'd be fun. This comment actually made me sad. I did not expect to get such a feeling talking about Patrick Mahomes. I legitimately want him to be great again, and it sucks that he isn't right now.