Patrick Mahomes is Tired of Dink-and-Dunk, and He's Taking it Out on Everybody

Patrick Mahomes may be the NFL's best quarterback, but he wasn't that at all when it came to deep passes last season.

On throws of 20 or more air yards, per Pro Football Focus, Mahomes completed 24 of 76 passes for 817 yards, two touchdowns, six interceptions, and a passer rating of 49.1. Among quarterbacks taking at least 50% of their teams' snaps, that was the NFL's worst passer rating on deep throws.

Not that it was Mahomes' fault, for the most part. As has been discussed ad nauseam , Mahomes' receivers let him down in just about every possible way in the 2023 season.

In this offseason, the Chiefs did a lot to give Mahomes the targets he actually deserves. They signed former Baltimore Ravens and Arizona Cardinals receiver Marquise "Hollywood" Brown to a one-year, $7.5 million contract with $6.5 million guaranteed. In 2023, Brown caught six deep passes on 21 targets for 175 yards and a touchdown. Not great numbers, but just as Mahomes was scuttled as a deep passer by his receivers, Brown was often shortchanged by his quarterbacks.

The Chiefs also selected Texas receiver Xavier Worthy with the 28th pick in the 2024 draft. Last season for the Longhorns, Worthy caught six deep passes on 23 targets for 234 yards and two touchdowns. But as was the case with Brown in Arizona, Worthy (who set the scouting combine 40-yard dash record with a 4.21-second time) wasn't always given the best opportunities by his quarterbacks. Quinn Ewers might be good at a lot of things, but throwing his guys open deep isn't one of them.

So now, Mahomes has at least two more credible deep targets than he did last season, and those deep targets have a quarterback with more arm talent than anybody who's ever thrown them a football.

From early training camp results, it's clear that the Chiefs' No. 1 option in the passing game is to air it out. Like, a lot.

Nobody can throw the ball downfield from more preposterous angles than Mahomes -- now, the difference seems to be that there are playmakers aligning vertically to catch those passes.

Here's Worthy making the most of it...

...and here's Brown.

There's also 2024 fourth-round tight end Jared Wiley from TCU, who might have more deep targets in his first couple of starts with the Chiefs than he did for the Horned Frogs all last season. Just three catches on five deep targets for 137 yards and two touchdowns, but Wiley has already shown the ability to track Mahomes' deep passes -- in spectacular fashion.

Over the last two seasons, the Chiefs have led the NFL in 13 personnel -- three tight ends on the field -- so it's easy to understand why Mahomes is interested in Wiley's potential.

“The physicality and the size and speed, you see that," Mahomes said on July 17 of the rookie. "Now, we get to test the mental ability and that tight end position is hard in the NFL, especially in Coach [Andy] Reid’s offense. You have to be able to block and make all the blocking assignments, but also do all the passing stuff, too. He’s doing a great job with that so far and we’re going to keep pushing him and see what we can do. There’s going to be a lot of competition in that room, obviously with Travis [Kelce] and Noah [Gray] but even the other guys that we have. I’m excited for him to get in and get the work and come back and hopefully be a big impact on our team.”

Reid is cautiously optimistic -- after all, this is all just practice with no full-bore opponent just yet -- but he has noticed the difference.

“I mean, he’s got to throw to the guy that’s open – we’re calling kind of the same plays, but he’s got guys that that’s a part of their game – the best part of their game is going downfield," Reid said this week of Mahomes throwing deep more often. "So, he’s utilizing that right now and testing it out and seeing how it works, and so far, he’s had some good connections there.”

The ideal (or at least more ideal) match of quarterback attributes and skill has Mahomes hitting the field with an entirely new edge. Hurling rockets all over the field at Missouri Western State University is just Part 1 of the larger plan.

“You always see it with Pat,” offensive coordinator Matt Nagy said of Mahomes’ new and different determination. ”He’s just in a – that’s just who he is, number one, so it starts out that way, but I think he looks at it like every year is a challenge. There’s always some type of edge that we [create] and he creates, and I think internally for him, the biggest thing now is being able to be more efficient, probably, as a unit on offense. Last year, we talked about what we went through. As a team, we won the Super Bowl, and I think being able to get through some of the challenges we went through and still win it creates [a] fire and burn for this year to be better on offense and help the team out in general.”

Worthy has missed practice time with illness and hamstring issues, but the transformative juice when he's out there is already readily apparent.

“Being able to get him out here when we can will be beautiful,” Nagy said of Worthy. “Rep-wise (and) timing-wise, and the one day that he was out here, I think it was exciting to see and feel the speed but also the tracking of the football on some of those downfield throws. The timing element of staying on time with press [coverage] that we’re getting – our guys on defense press a lot. Just those guys understand the angles at [the] top of routes, and I would say the biggest thing is tracking [the football in the air]. For the one time that we were together for that day, it was really great to see, and I think that was why we all got so excited, especially with Xavier.”

The Chiefs have won three of the last five Super Bowls. They're in line to become the first team to win three straight, and the first team to win three consecutive NFL Championships since the 1965-1967 Green Bay Packers. Mahomes' all-time credentials are already secure. Steve Spagnuolo's defense is the thing that saved the team late in the season, and it looks to be just about as good in 2024.

All those things are true. Now, add the deep passing game that's been virtually nonexistent since Tyreek Hill left town in a trade to the Miami Dolphins before the 2022 season -- combined with a version of Mahomes that is utterly committed to re-establishing it -- and you have a different kind of steamroller coming out of the NFL's current capital.

Beware, NFL. The deep-ball Chiefs might be all the way back.

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