Is Patrick Mahomes Really Going to Air It Out?

July 27, 2018

QB Patrick Mahomes enters the 2018 NFL season as a starting quarterback for the first time. Justin Carter examines his profile and fit into the Chiefs offense to determine whether he'll pile up air yards or wind up disappointing fantasy football owners.

The Kansas City Chiefs will turn to a new quarterback in 2018, with former Texas Tech quarterback Patrick Mahomes taking the reins in Arrowhead Stadium. Known during college for his strong arm and gunslinger mentality, he takes over a Chiefs offense that has one of the league's faster wide receivers, Tyreek Hill, and a newly-acquired deep threat, Sammy Watkins, but do those factors necessarily mean that Mahomes will immediately be throwing the ball all over the field?

PlayerProfiler lists Mahomes's throwing velocity at 60 miles per hour, which puts him in the 97th percentile of quarterbacks. He was drafted in the 2014 MLB Draft by the Detroit Tigers as a pitcher, but chose football. By all accounts, Mahomes has a big arm, but does that big arm necessarily translate to big plays and deep throws in the NFL? What about all the other factors?

Let's break down Mahomes' college career, look at some throws from his first NFL start, and investigate some of the other factors that affect quarterback success as we try to answer this question: will Mahomes be airing the ball out this season for the Kansas City Chiefs.

Patrick Mahomes: The College Years

Let's start with two words that should strike fear into fantasy players everywhere: Air Raid. The offensive scheme pioneered by Mike Leach and Hal Mumme focuses on passing, on going with the no huddle, and on offensive line schemes that spread the line apart and creates additional passing lanes for the quarterback while also enabling more quick passing plays. It's a scheme that has worked well in the college, but quarterbacks bred in Air Raid offenses have struggled in the NFL. Players like Tim Couch, Kevin Kolb, Kliff Kingsbury, and Graham Harrell have failed to make an impact in the NFL after coming out of Air Raid schemes.

Could that tide be changing, though? Case Keenum and Jared Goff spent their college years in the Air Raid and the NFL has emphasized the no huddle, pass-oriented offense more and more over the years. Having played in the scheme is no longer the massive disadvantage it was in the past, when quarterbacks entered the league without having the requisite experience reading the field to find success in a game that's faster and more reliant on quarterbacks finding their second or third reads.

Still, the scheme that Texas Tech used is a big part of the gaudy numbers that Mahomes put up as a Red Raider. Mahomes led the FBS in passing yards in 2016 with 5052 yards. He had a 435 yard lead over second place Ryan Higgins. Mahomes was 15th in the FBS in yards per attempt that year. Unfortunately, I don't have access to college air yard data to find out how much of that came through the air and how much came in yards after the catch, but it's worth noting that players who finished ahead of him that year in yards per attempt include Baker Mayfield, Nathan Peterman, Mason Rudolph, Lamar Jackson, and Josh Allen. (But again, take everything here with a grain of salt because of the scheme Mahomes was in and the number of passing attempts -- 591, third in the FBS behind Luke Falk (another Air Raider) and Davis Webb (uhh, also another Air Raider!) -- that he had.)

Back in 2017, Football Outsiders looked at the 2017 quarterback draft class in relations to their Quarterback-Adjusted-Stats-and-Experience (QBASE) metric. Combining their college production with other scouting information, QBASE measures what a player's projected efficiency will be in their third through fifth NFL seasons. Taking into account that Mahomes is in just his second season, let's look at what his QBASE numbers imply. Mahomes QBASE score of 656 was the highest of any quarterback in his draft class, suggesting that he should be primed for the best career of any of the 2017 quarterbacks.

But wait! Let's get back to the dreaded Air Raid issue. Football Outsiders also points out that not a single quarterback from an Air Raid system has ever performed at or above the level projected by their QBASE score. Can Mahomes change that? Maybe, and the fact that he rates so well in relation to the other quarterbacks from this class is a positive sign, but his college statistics are ultimately inconclusive in terms of what they tell us about Mahomes as a NFL passer.

His First (and Only) NFL Start

Maybe his first NFL start can tell us something! Mahomes was under center in Week 17 last year for the Chiefs as they'd already locked up a playoff berth and even without his team's top skill position players he put up a fairly decent outing, finishing with 284 yards on 22-for-35 passing. He didn't toss a touchdown, but he did throw an interception. Not the best game, but with Albert Wilson as the only reliable receiver in that game it was ultimately an impressive game. He also finished it with 116 air yards. To put that in perspective, the Chiefs primary starter, Alex Smith, averaged 142 air yards per game, finishing eighth in the league in air yards in his 15 starts. Smith's average pass attempt went 7.9 yards, with Mahomes's average pass attempt traveling 7.9 yards as well.

I'm not too concerned with the actual stats from that game, and for the purposes of this article, I'm not concerned with how most of his passes looked either. I want to focus on what Mahomes deep ball looked like -- the placement, the timing, etc. If we think he'll be airing the ball out and creating yards downfield in the NFL, one of our best pieces of evidence will be how he did in these situations on an NFL field.

Normally I'd break all these plays up into GIFs, but there's a lot of them, so here's the video of the whole thing with my thoughts on selected plays below. Note: Mahomes has some good throws out into the flat and inside the first down marker that make me feel good about his accuracy, but for the purposes of this I want to focus on passes that are traveling 10 or more yards in the air:

• 0:09 - Mahomes fires one across the middle to Demarcus Robinson. The pass itself is fine, but there are three defenders in the area and Robinson doesn't complete the catch.
• 0:22 - Goes deep to tight end Demetrius Harris. Good placement on this one -- there's a defender in front of Harris and one behind him, but Mahomes sees enough of a cushion and puts it in a spot where Harris is the only one who can make a play on it.
• 0:53 - Mahomes is trying to get the ball to De'Anthony Thomas inside the the 15, but he misses on the throw and gets it picked off. Accuracy issues here, but it's the kind of throw that would have been huge for Kansas City if he hits it.
• 1:45 - This pass sure looks nice. Mahomes avoids the sack and throws a perfectly placed ball down the field to Albert Wilson. I'm hesitant to give the play too much weight because it came in a situation where Mahomes rhythm was thrown off, which happened to have been a good thing in this case but I'm not sure it tells us much about Mahomes on plays where his rhythm isn't disrupted.
• 2:15 - Similar to the earlier pass to Harris, Mahomes puts the ball over Wilson's shoulder. Despite Wilson being double covered, Mahomes places the ball right where Wilson is the only one capable of making a play on it.
• 2:42 - Play action. Mahomes steps into the throw and finds Albert Wilson down the field close to the left sideline. It's a good throw, though it looks like there were some coverage issues that helped Wilson get that open.
• 3:30 - Mahomes completely overthrows Robinson on this one. Some miscommunication it looks like, as Mahomes threw the ball too early for Robinson to where he needed to be. It's good to see the overthrow instead of an underthrow, though, as Mahomes puts the ball out of reach of the defense as well.
• 3:45 - On third and long, Mahomes puts the ball in Wilson's hands past the first down marker. It's a good, accurate throw to Wilson.
• 4:31 - Mahomes is under pressure and is forced to throw the ball as he's backing up. Misses Robinson to the right side, but some good zip on the throw.
• 4:50 - Hits Robinson right at the first down marker. A good, accurate pass.
• 5:00 - Goes deep to Robinson in the end zone. A bit of an overthrow again. Mahomes has a cannon of an arm, but he'll have to avoid throwing it out of his receiver's reach.
• 6:15 - Mahomes is under immense pressure. Backs up. Keeps backing up. It looks like he's about to throw it away, but instead he fires a dangerous pass to Robinson. With three defenders in the vicinity, Mahomes has to place the ball perfectly while he's still moving away from the receiver if he wants to make it a positive play. It's a small window and Mahomes is able to hit it. There's something Brett Favre about this play -- to trust your arm strength more than anything else and to make a play that you shouldn't be making.
• 6:40 - We almost see the flip side of that last play here. Mahomes is on the move in the backfield, buys some time, and eventually fires the ball downfield towards Harris, who is double covered. It's another dangerous play and it ends up as an an incompletion, but it's not a stretch to imagine a ball like that picked off.

Andy Reid Offenses and Final Thoughts

Here's an interesting quote from RotoBaller's Leonard Francis II, who wrote a great piece this week about Mahomes and two other young quarterbacks -- Mitch Trubisky and Jimmy Garoppolo.

Since 1999, 17 QBs have started at least 10 games for teams coached by Andy Reid, and of those 17, only three failed to put up at least 3,000 yards passing (2002 Donovan McNabb – who added 460 rushing yards and six rushing TDs, 2006 McNabb – who was coming off sports hernia surgery, and 2012 Michael Vick).

Playing for Reid should provide Mahomes with a solid floor. Factor in Alex Smith's 2017 performance for the Chiefs, when Smith discovered the deep ball and led the league with 1,344 deep passing yards, and we have a good collection of evidence that the offensive scheme in Kansas City fits with the profile we have of Mahomes as a deep ball passer. On the flip side, Smith finished with such impressive numbers on the back of a league-best completion percentage on deep throws. The veteran threw deep on 12.3 percent of his attempts per PFF, which puts him 11th in the league in deep throw percentage. Mahomes is unlikely to equal the efficiency of Smith right out of the gate, but the addition of another downfield threat in Watkins should balance some of that out. All in all, I'm encouraged by Andy Reid. (My wife is a huge Chiefs fan and I can already hear her laughing at me when she reads this and sees the word "encouraged" next to Andy Reid's name.)

Put all this together and what do we spell: A-I-R. Mahomes should get plenty of chances to throw the ball deep and he has the right pieces around him to make those throws work. There's no guarantee that Mahomes is actually going to be a good NFL quarterback -- despite recent changes, we are still working in a tradition where Air Raid quarterbacks struggle to adapt at this level -- but it won't be from a lack of effort and opportunity if he struggles. His game tape makes me worry about turnovers, but it doesn't leave me concerned about his ability to fire off the deep ball.

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