[Chiefspants]

Here’s what I got.

1. Mahomes deep ball, even at its best, was usually regarded as average. He usually doesn’t put a whole lot of loft into it (likely because he doesn’t need to), but this makes deep throws harder to time and doesn’t leave the receiver with a whole lot of time to adjust.

2. There’s been great discussion on this in the Mahomes thread (by DJ and others) that Mahomes cut his teeth in the NFL primarily by receivers who were not great at over the shoulder catches. Hill is a great example here, as he liked to pivot and turn. This meant Mahomes spent his four years with primary pass catchers (Hill and Kelce) demanding that the grand majority of his balls be thrown in this fashion. Hill also gave Patrick a hell of a margin of error with perhaps the greatest tracking ability I’ve ever seen on a football field.

***Sammy Watkins is a major exception to this rule, as he grabbed three of Mahomes best long balls in his career during the postseason.

3. MVS continued this trend. He never seemed to have the over the shoulder catch mastered and preferred to turn and catch. He also seemed rather clueless on deep routes more often than not.

4. Now I believe Mahomes deserves a little grace for his line this season. He has been getting obliterated, and it’s caused him to lean into some bad habits. Kurt Warner, who has more often than not been critical of Mahomes through the years, has championed Mahomes play this year and credited Patrick as the reason why we were able to win the division. It makes sense that Mahomes has felt sped up this year especially as he tries to master timing with receivers he didn’t have coming into the year.

5. So where does that leave us? You take Patrick, who is elite in almost everything but the deep ball, and have him spend the first six years with a cast of receivers who also prefer not to catch the ball over the shoulder, and now ask him to fix this issue in a season where he’s had to rely on abysmal blocking on his blindside, and idk, it seems natural that there’s some issues as teams are now daring Patrick to win deep - especially as Patrick is grappling with lower body injuries (an issue through his career) and an admitted lack of trust with his tackles.