Back Patrick Mahomes to Steer Kansas City Chiefs Recovery Into Postseason Action
When the season started, the Kansas City Chiefs were rightly considered one of the favorites to go all the way to Super Bowl glory, but things haven’t worked quite as head coach Andy Reid would have liked, and his star performer Patrick Mahomes is very much the key cog in his Arrowhead Stadium roster.
After the first four games of the season, with the Chiefs 2-2, Mahomes was arguably still delivering the goods, and at that point, he was sitting in among the top quarterbacks in terms of many stats, but things haven’t gone as the former NFL MVP would have liked in recent weeks.
If you look at the NFL football betting lines now, you’ll see that the Chiefs have fallen from favorites down to sixth, with (+1200) now available on Kansas City clinching a Super Bowl triumph. The season is long enough, especially with the extra game from this season onwards, for Mahomes to push his team in the right direction.
There has been talk of Mahomes switching the style of his game in order to get him back to his best, but it’s not something the 26-year-old is particularly interested in;
“I mean, I’m going to take shots, the last few years, I’ve taken those shots, and they’ve worked. I’ve taken those shots, and they haven’t worked (as well this season), and we’ve still been able to find ways to score points.
“Whenever I’ve got a guy with a chance to make a play downfield, I’m going to give him a chance to make a play,” Mahomes added.
Mahomes has been a victim of far too many interceptions of late, but that’s part and parcel of his all or nothing approach, and approach that has worked more often than it hasn’t.
“I think, just in general, even when we’re not connecting on them, it still tells that defense they have to back up, and it opens up stuff underneath, taking those shots during the game, even if they’re not connecting, it kind of puts a little bit of a fear into the defense to know they can’t start coming up; they can’t start jumping some of our routes.
“So obviously, it’s going to be nice when we complete one of these. We haven’t completed one in a couple of weeks here. But either way, taking those shots and having those opportunities at the right time and the right place will continue to open up the offense more and more.”
It would be harsh to criticize Mahomes overly; we are, after all, talking about a player in his fourth full season at Kansas City and has a record of 49-14 and overall numbers that put him well and truly in the top bracket.
Things haven’t worked out thus far this season, but recent wins against the New York Giants and the Green Bay Packers have brought them to a manageable 5-4 record that puts them just a game behind the Los Angeles Chargers and the Las Vegas Raiders in the AFC West, a division they are still very well placed to take.
