i chortled with joy yesterday watching Mahomes scramble for his life and, basically, play like crap because he was being mercilessly harassed by the Eagles stellar front four. I was especially pleased because it proved a point that has become a mantra for me, and that is any QB is going to look bad if he doesn’t have time to throw and if he gets nervous and distracted because he’s waiting to be hit. Mahomes finished with a QBR of 11.4, the second lowest in a Super Bowl since the rating began being used in 2006.
There are fans who actually want to get rid of Caleb Williams because he didn’t look like Mahomes in his rookie season behind an offensive line that was probably the worst in the NFL.
The fact is that Williams had impressive stats considering the fact that he had about 1.5 seconds to throw the football. I’d like to see Mahomes face an entire season like Williams had to face. I don’t think he’d handle it as well as Williams. It’s time for those loudmouth don’t-know-crap-about-football “fans” to shut up and learn the game.
It’s not an either-or sort of situation. Good offensive lines will make everyone else look good, good receivers will make a good quarterback look good, and good quarterbacks will make receivers look better.
(slight topic-adjacent rant) That’s why I get really annoyed when I heard dumb-ass sportscasters and fans talking about “skill” positions, as if offensive line requires neither skill nor intelligence. In fact those positions require both, and more of either than positions like running back and receiver which require more physical know-how than actual game intelligence or anything like that. Good linemen have to understand the play being called, the defense arrayed against them, and how to modify their blocking on the fly to achieve the goal of the play, whether it’s to create a hole for a running back or pass block against a complicated rush scheme. By contrast, all a running back generally has to do is know what hole to run toward, and do his physical thing. Receivers are slightly more complicated, but they really don’t have to understand the play to adjust routes and get open.
Agree with @bump. NFL quarterbacks are all good enough to pick apart the defense if they are given 4 or 5 seconds to throw the ball. Conversely, no NFL quarterback is going to do well if he has little time to throw, as evidenced by Mahomes yesterday (and in his other SB loss against the Bucs a few seasons ago). And yesterday the Eagles did not blitz on one single play, meaning that there were always 7 defenders to cover at most 5 receivers.
The Chiefs entered the game 17-2. Are we going to pretend that they had a poor support system for Mahomes? It was one game, they got whipped, but the term “Any Given Sunday” exists for a reason. I’d say that Mahomes basically carried this deeply flawed roster all season and it was ultimately exposed in this game when it became too much.
I totally agree, and that is what makes my point. Even a guy with the pedigree that Mahomes has becomes very human when hunted like a prey animal. This is a point that has been lost on far too many Chicago fans for far too long. We’re supposed be rectifying this during the off season. We shall see.
Apparently in rugby there’s a saying, “Forwards win games, backs determine the margin.” Here it seems American football has not strayed all that very far away from its roots.
That’s fine and all, but the Title of the post is “The Team Makes the QB, not Vice-Versa”.
That’s simply not uniformly true. Happy to get into the weeds on what the Bears should and shouldn’t do, but the title of your post is a complete overreaction to the Super Bowl, and it isn’t even accurate in the context of the 2025 Chiefs.
It’s clear that in the case of the 2025 Chiefs, the QB in fact did make the team. He singlehandedly carried this offense and ultimately the team to the Super Bowl. His line has been trash. His RBs have been hurt. His WRs are a who’s who of has beens and never weres. Mahomes put this team on his back all year. And yes, in the Super Bowl, you aren’t going to beat a great team when your QB is basically out there on his own. Even the best guys get gun shy eventually.
Yesterday’s game does not prove the meta-point you are saying it does. QBs matter a lot and great ones can cover up a lot of warts. Mahomes is mortal, but if you drop him (and Andy Reid) into pretty much any other roster, the odds are decent that he’s taking that team deep into the playoffs.
I watched, I think, four Chiefs’ games, and he got immaculate protection in those games, so I have to disagree with your statement. Sure, Mahomes is Mahomes, a future member of the Hall, but I think your statement is the over reaction here
I watched, I think, 99.9% of the Chiefs plays this season. My sample size is a bit larger than yours.
If you mean ‘immaculate protection’ to be no sacks allowed, and always had time to throw, then you would be flat-out wrong. In the 16 games that Mahomes started, there were, yes, 3 games that he wasn’t sacked, but he faced constant pressure in every game. There were two games in which he was sacked 5 times, and two more in which he was sacked four times. KC was sixth-worst in the league in allowing pressure on the quarterback, and 3rd-worst in allowing quarterback hits.
And, oh, by the way, KC averaged 1.6 yards per carry rushing this season, better than only one other team. Yet another indication that the offensive line was a major weakness of the Chiefs.
The Chiefs were 15th in a 32-team league in scoring. They were 16th in yards gained. By any measure their offense was simply not all that great, and it’s a credit to the coaching staff, defense and game management they won as many games as they did.
The fact their offense got run over by probably the best defense in the NFL isn’t especially remarkable.
I used to say that if Tom Brady had been drafted by the Lions of that era instead of the Patriots, he wouldn’t be the GOAT, he’d be “who?!?”. Not as a knock against Brady, but to make a point similar to the OP, relating to how aggressively mediocre to just plain bad the Lions were in that era. Seemed like the front office for years used to constantly blow salary caps on promising potential ‘star’ players like a hot new QB prospect or a running back, trying to find the next Barry Sanders, and neglecting the basics, like filling holes on their ‘o’ line. I think there were several players on Lions’ teams of the past whose careers went nowhere, but could have had great runs if those players had just had a better support system.
Apparently! Maybe I was their good luck charm. LOL
I agree, and the Bears have also proved that true. If Mahomes had been drafted by the Bears, does anyone think he’d have 3 Super Bowl titles? Even one? He’d more likely be nervous, neurotic, or even physically hobbled by now.
Not that I dispute your point about the Lions at all, but the season before Brady came in, the Patriots went 5-11 and were last in their division. The next year they went 11-5 and won the Super Bowl. Obviously, a lot of other changes happened that off-season (ahem, Belichick), but Brady clearly and immediately elevated a mediocre/rebuilding team. And then of course much later he goes to the Bucs and wins another SB immediately.
So I don’t think your “drop Brady onto the Lions” theory holds a lot of water, not that it could ever be truly tested.
Maybe, maybe not, but I watched year after year of the Lions investing in ‘flash’ positions instead of taking care of the basics, like drafting a strong o-line, and watching promising QBs immediately getting sacked or rushed time after time after time as the front line collapsed like wet paper straws, especially during the (shudder) Matt Millen years.
The Lions organization used to be where head coaching careers went to die, as well. For many years it was a fact that no Lions head coach ever went on to be an NFL head coach anywhere else. Some did find success at lower-level coaching positions though- like Marty Mornhinweg: awful run as Lions head coach, went on to become the Eagles offensive coordinator and had a good run there.
