The Best Ever Individual Season In KC Professional Sports History
 

After the amazing year by Mahomes, it made me wonder. Was this THE best ever season by any KC professional athlete in history?

Note, this covers the Chiefs and the Royals. One may want to raise Tom Watson in this and yes, he did win a pair of majors in both 1977 and 1982, but we're talking best individual season by a player on a professional sports team.

All due respect to DT's 20 sack season in 1990, Priest Holmes tremendous seasons in 2002 & 2003, Christian Okoye's NFL rushing best 1989 season, Joe Montans's memorable 1993 season or cripes, Larry Johnson's 2006 season, nobody had a better season than 2018 Patrick Mahomes. The crazy thing is if he stays healthy, he should have even better seasons than this year - heck, this season may not even rank in his Top 5 seasons when it's all said and done!

(I wasn't around for the Stram Era Chiefs but I don't think anyone had a season like 2018 Mahomes. Old timers feel free to chime in...)

So we go across the parking lot to the Royals. There was 2009 Zach Grienke. Not good enough. 1989 Bret Saberhagen, 1985 Bret Saberhagen? Good ones, but Mahomes was better. Maybe a 1987 Kevin Seitzer or a 1977 Al Cowens? Who are we kidding - it's not even close.

There's only ONE player who can really go toe to to toe with Mahomes and that's George Brett. Which season can compare to 2018 Mahomes? Well he did have awesome 1976, 1979, 1985 and 1990 seasons. Other than 1985, none of those other seasons could beat that. 1985 may have been Brett's best season overall, especially with it ending in a World Series Championship that he pretty much carried the Royals on his back to glory. His numbers were excellent but compare it to 2018 Mahomes and it falls short - not by much, but it does.

However, there was the 1980 Brett season - a season that was (like Mahomes this year) completely unreal.

A lot of you were not alive for that magical year and some of you may not even follow baseball that much, but let me tell you. It was off the charts amazing and the only thing comparable to 2018 Mahomes. Dare I say, it can be argued that 1980 Brett was even better than 2018 Mahomes.

Consider these numbers:

Brett finished at .390, leading the major leagues in average, on-base percentage (.454) and slugging percentage (.664). His 1.118 OPS was more than 100 points better than anyone else's that season.

And though he didn't hit .400 ...

• He hit .437 with 118 hits and six strikeouts in 270 at-bats against right-handed pitching.

• From May 30 to August 30 (a stretch that included a stint on the DL), Brett hit .470 (!) with 116 hits in 61 games (in which the Royals went 46-15). He hit .494 in the month of July.

• He hit .469 with 61 hits and five strikeouts with runners in scoring position.

• He hit .421 in the first five innings of games.

• He hit .425 with 22 RBIs in 10 games against the Yankees. That was foreshadowing for the postseason, when his three-run home run against Rich Gossage in Game 3 of the ALCS helped put the Royals into the World Series for the first ever time.

Those numbers are freaking ridiculous!

Mahomes by comparison had the 5,097 yards and 50 TD's passing (52 overall when you factor in the rushing TDs), Include the playoffs and he threw for 53 TD's and ran in 3 more.

The Chiefs offense scored 66 TD's in the regular season and 8 more in the playoffs for 74 TD's (that averages to more than 4 TD's PER GAME).

Twelve different Chiefs players caught at least 1 TD pass from Mahomes.

Mahomes only turned the ball over 16 times (12 picks, 4 fumbles) for the entire season including playoffs. That's 18 games, less than 1 a game.

Mahomes threw for at least 300 yards a total of 10 times this season. He had over 300 combined yards another 3 times. In the other 5 games, his lowest combined yardage total was 246 yards.

Both Brett and Mahomes led their teams to Divisional Championships.

Both Brett and Mahomes exorcised demons in the postseason (Brett finally overcoming the Yankees postseason jinx, Mahomes overcoming the Arrowhead playoff jinx and the Colts playoff jinx all in one).

Both Brett and Mahomes fell short in their quest to win a Championship but not by lack of trying (Brett batted .375 in the World Series and hit a HR in his very first home at bat, Mahomes put up 24 4th quarter points in the AFC Championship Game).

It makes for a fun argument, where there's really no right answer - just total dominance by what will be the two most popular professional athletes in Kansas City sports history?

If you had to choose one, who would you say had the best ever season?

1980 Brett or 2018 Mahomes?

Poll to follow...

Mahomes

END OF THREAD

Brett sat a ton of games down the stretch to maintain the batting average. Mahomes didn’t. End of argument for me.

Edit: stupid autocorrect

Mahomes played a full, grueling 16 game schedule

Brett only played in 117 baseball games

Clearly Mahomes

Is KC more Chiefs or Royals town?

Kinda curious.

Lots of love for both but the population in KC will double exactly nine months after the Chiefs win a SB

No Tom Watson? ;)

Me being an outsider always felt like it was more of a Chiefs town :shrug:

No Maurice Greene?

edit:
In the 1999-2000 season, he was the World champ in 100, 200, and 4X100, toss in a coupla golds at the Sydney Olympics (100, 4X100) and another Worlds title in the 100m in 2001. Maybe Satchel Paige comes close

No 2000 Elvis Grbac?

Mahomes no question. Wanted to mention Houston’s 21.5 or whatever it ended up season as well.

I don't remember the specifics of Brett's 1980 season, but one of my early childhood memories was watching the 1980 World Series, it was the first time I remember eating Doritos. I have had the pleasure of witnessing a George Brett Home Run in person at Royals Stadium (pre Kauffman days) and was at the first game the Royals played after Dick Howser died. They won by 10. Dick Howser's number.

While George Brett was a childhood hero, I had to vote Mahomes. :clap:

Only 24 homers.

Not even close.

I think I might put DT's 20-sack season before Brett.

Getting that many sacks back then was HARD.

Without having seen the poll I would have said Brett 1980. I think that's probably the right answer. Dude hit .390 and there are like two guys in the last 75 years of baseball to do that. That's probably the single most impressive feat in KC sports history.

I would say you're probably underrating Brett 1985 though. Monster season, great performance in the playoffs, World Championship. That's hard to beat.

Mahomes is in the ballpark and has a great chance to do it going forward, but he got shut out in the first half of a playoff game. That's tough but it'd probably put him just behind Brett 80. That and hitting .390 is just disgusting. It's the hardest thing to do in sports and he did it that year better than anyone has in decades.

Hard to compare one baseball player to a football quarterback

In the end, they both went 1-1 in the playoffs