Let’s begin with the obvious. Patrick Mahomes is not on top of his game.
Here’s where he stood after four games last season:
276 pass yards per game, a 66 percent completion rate, 11 touchdowns, two interceptions, a 108.4 passer rating and 0.368 expected points added (EPA) per play.
Here’s where he stands in 2023:
251 pass yards per game, a 64 percent completion rate, eight touchdowns, four interceptions, a 92.0 passer rating and 0.248 (EPA) per play.
Those numbers are still very good, but they aren’t MVP caliber. Mahomes only has one game this season with a passer rating over 100 and it came against the lowly Chicago Bears.
This downturn is apparent in the team’s receiving yardage totals. By this time last season, Travis Kelce had 26 catches and 322 yards. JuJu Smith-Schuster, the team’s top-targeted wideout, clocked in at 19 catches and 224 yards. Tyreek Hill was gone, but Mahomes still had his Hall of Fame tight end and a reliable possession receiver to keep his offense on schedule.
That isn’t the case in 2023. Kelce is first on the team in yards per game, but is stuck at less than half his 2022 output (17 catches with only 155 yards). If you stack Rashee Rice and Skyy Moore on top of each other they’re about where Smith-Schuster was (20 receptions, 262 yards) but neither has proven reliable or consistent on their own. Kadarius Toney, supposed to be a do-whatever chain-mover, is averaging six yards per catch.
Thus, Mahomes is saddled with the league’s ninth-ranked scoring offense — again, not bad but not what we expect from these Chiefs.
Kansas City is getting less from its usually reliable passing attack when it comes to keeping the team out of third-and-long situations. Success rate measures how good a unit is at keeping its offense on schedule. A play is considered successful if it picks up at least 50 percent of yards required to move the chains on first down, 70 percent of yards to gain on second down and 100 percent on third or fourth down.
Last year, the Chiefs’ 53.6 percent success rate on dropbacks ranked first in the league, nearly two full points higher than the second-place Buffalo Bills. This year, their 48.9 percent mark ranks eighth, with players like Moore and Toney each clocking in at under 50 percent when targeted. Mahomes remains a wizard on third down, but continually having to pull off third-and-long isn’t a sustainable strategy.
It doesn’t help that Toney and Rice each rank in the top-six when it comes to drops early in the season (three apiece), negating the fact that that pairing leads the team in average yards of separation per route run (4.1 for Toney, 3.5 for Rice, per Next Gen Stats). The athleticism and the playcalling is in place, but the execution is not.
As a result, defenses can invest all their skill points in limiting Kelce and force Mahomes to run down his wish list before throwing to a player with whom he’s got a limited rapport. Per analytics wizard Arjun Menon, he’s got a bottom-10 rate of throwing to his first read, which has generally been Kelce.
He's right haha. Before this week, only Deshaun Watson had a higher % of throws to their first read than Daniel Jones. And Jones was extremely inefficient on throws to his first read https://t.co/dYUbeDMisl pic.twitter.com/E4bbkehlyV
— Arjun Menon (@arjunmenon100) October 3, 2023
He’s still very good on these throws, but the data suggest it’s not exactly how Andy Reid envisions each play unfolding.
These problems have manifested in the intermediate range passing game. Mahomes attempted 7.6 passes that traveled between 10 and 19 yards downfield last season and completed a tremendous 62.3 percent of them. This year he’s down to just 4.3 such attempts per game and a 47 percent completion rate — again, a bad sign for a player whose offense shows the traits of a team that faces plenty of third-and-longs.
The blocking is a concern as well. Let’s start with the obvious; $80 million right tackle Jawaan Taylor has not been the upgrade the Chiefs had hoped when they let Orlando Brown Jr. sign with the Cincinnati Bengals (he’s had his own issues, but we’re not talking about the Bengals’ struggles … this time). Taylor has been the target of blown blocks, entirely too many penalties (nine, three times as many as anyone else on the roster) and a spirited debate on whether his tilted-back stance on the line constituted shrewd preparation or outright cheating.
But Taylor isn’t the only culprit. He’s responsible for only three of the eight holding penalties that have stemmed drives and forced the offense off schedule — and replay suggests Kansas City probably should have been flagged for several more, if the Jets game was any indication.
Watch how long Jermaine Johnson (11) gets held on this play with no call 😂 #KCvsNYJ
pic.twitter.com/IB5FniTFh0— Bad Sports Refs (@BadSportsRefs) October 2, 2023
This hasn’t impacted the running game. While the Chiefs are averaging the same yards per carry as they did in 2022, their tailbacks have gotten significantly more room to run. Last year Kansas City’s backs averaged 2.7 yards before contact on handoffs; this season that number is up to 3.7. Of course, that also means that the team’s backs aren’t doing much after running into static. Their 1.0 yards after contact is the fifth-worst number in the league. While Isiah Pacheco has continued to shine, the support behind him, at least when it comes to handoffs, has been below average.
What does this tell us? That Mahomes is getting less from his supporting cast than he was in last year’s MVP campaign, leaving his efficiency to drag. His completion percentage over expected (CPOE) is down from plus-3.6 — second-best among starters last year to a middling 0.4 this season. While his deep ball remains crisp and his catchable throw rate is third-best in the league at 84.4 percent, the rest of the lineup has yet to rise to his level.
***
The Chiefs have a contingency plan in place. Their defense has allowed fewer points than all but four other NFL teams. Chris Jones remains a wrecking ball up front, providing cover for a young secondary to continue gelling together and Kansas City ranks fifth in EPA/play allowed.
But those promising returns came against bad offenses; the only one to rank among the top 22 in overall efficiency is the 13th-ranked Lions.
Games against top 10 offenses from the Los Angeles Chargers (twice), Philadelphia Eagles, Miami Dolphins and Buffalo Bills remain. There’s a bit of buffer room for the offense to come alive, but it’s reasonable to expect this defense will have a harder time late in the season than it did in Weeks 1 through 4.
This means Kansas City needs to find a way to pry more production from the potential of a receiving corps in dire need of a co-star for Travis Kelce. Mahomes remains roughly the quarterback he was in 2022, but the cast around him has changed for the worse and, despite a 3-1 record, his Chiefs seem mortal. This could just mean giving young wideouts more opportunities and hoping they can grow into their role; or it could mean getting drastic as the trade deadline approaches.
