More Records, a Ranking Reminder, and Getting Patrick Mahomes’ Name Right
Patrick Mahomes is appointment television when he's playing bad teams. If he was the only notable name in the game, it's still worth a watch.
Monday night, the Chiefs and Ravens squared up in a game full of stars. The two biggest ones, of course, at quarterback. Mahomes was projected to lose a duel against reigning MVP Lamar Jackson.
That didn't happen. The Chiefs won 34-20, and Mahomes outshined Jackson in every way.
Jackson finished with 97 yards passing, one touchdown through the air and zero rushing touchdowns. He was sacked four times and fumbled twice. Mahomes, on the other hand, finished with 385 yards passing, four passing touchdowns, a rushing score, avoided the pressure, and didn't have any turnovers.
Let's hit the highlights of the Monday night beatdown.
Early in the game on a completion to Travis Kelce, Mahomes became the fastest player ever to throw for 10,000 yards in their NFL careers. He made his 34th start last night, which is two starts earlier than Hall of Fame QB Kurt Warner did it. It was also faster than Matthew Stafford, Andrew Luck, Dan Marino, and every other NFL QB to ever throw for 10,000 yards.
In the game, Mahomes used his legs to score the first touchdown, an obvious message to Lamar Jackson. An 'anything you can do, I can do better' kind of thing.
Then, Mahomes threw an underhand strike to the fullback. I mean, he's just showing off, right?
Mahomes then had a couple of conventional bombs to Tyreek Hill and Mecole Hardman.
Before throwing his fourth touchdown of the night to an offensive lineman. What kind of team has the best weapons in the NFL and schemes an offensive lineman open? The best kind of team, that's who. The fathletes need to eat, too.
Here's where Mahomes' "competitive prick" nature starts to shine through. Most everyone on the broadcast saw Mahomes count to four after the throw and assume he was counting his touchdowns to Hill, Hardman, Sherman, and Fisher.
Not so fast.
He wasn't counting his touchdowns. Mahomes is much cockier than that, and rightly so. The young quarterback is Michael Jordan-esque when he sees perceived disrespect.
This offseason, after a Super Bowl MVP award for Mahomes and one of the greatest playoff runs ever, the blockheads in the NFL ranked Lamar Jackson as the best player in the NFL. Can you guess where Mahomes was ranked? That's right. Fourth.
Lamar Jackson. Russell Wilson. Aaron Donald. Patrick Mahomes.
When his name was released, Mahomes tweeted a single emoji: ✍
He wanted the people to know he'd write that down and remember it and bring it back out when the time was right.
If all of that wasn't enough from a Monday Night Football game, we also finally might have sorted out the annoying habit of calling Patrick Mahomes, 'Pat.'
That's not his name. I've been telling people this for several years now, but I'm just some guy who interviewed him once. I asked him after the interview if he preferred Patrick or Pat. He responded, "Pat is my dad's name." That was good enough for me.
Still, who am I? Nobody. You know who does matter when it comes to the Patrick vs Pat conversation? Patrick's mom. She had this to say last night:
The ESPN crew led by Steve Levy corrected themselves on air, apologizing for the mistake and promising Mahomes' mom that they'd be better moving forward.
She wasn't mad though... just disappointed.
Twitter user Joey Mulinaro had the best response to the exchange between mom and the Monday Night football broadcasters.