Answering the Patrick Mahomes Question

Amidst his falling value, consider the long view

As I previewed in Top Lines last week, Patrick Mahomes has been at the forefront of my sports brain lately, as he’s seemingly both the best player in the NFL and yet, over the last two years, underperforming his elite standard. Following arguably the worst game and the worst regular season of his career, it’s time to have the Patrick Mahomes conversation.

My Stance vs the Market

To those who’ve followed my work the last few seasons, you’ll know I’ve been a skeptic of Mahomes’ market valuation. I do think he’s the best quarterback in the league, but that he’s in a tier with Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson.¹ My expectation has been that whichever has the best supporting cast will generally have the best season.²

However, the market has generally taken the opposite view, which is essentially that because Mahomes is clearly the best QB in the league, we should always expect him to perform the best. This has been reflected in his fantasy ADP, which has never dropped below 50, despite Mahomes offering far less rushing upside than the other elite QBs he was priced by.

This perception was generally driven by Mahomes career performance, which has been clearly better than his closest peers.

However, we’ve collectively failed to appreciate Mahomes’ supporting cast³, especially early in his career. As we can see below, it was clearly superior on offense relative to Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson.

Through 2022, Mahomes had a significant edge in pass blocking and with his top two weapons relative to Allen and Lamar.⁴ The Chiefs had a worse defense, but that often forced them to play more aggressively, and contributed to Mahomes fantasy production, including 39+ touchdowns in four of five years. That level of insane production undoubtedly reinforced our perception of him as the best quarterback.

However, over the last two seasons, Mahomes offensive supporting cast has been decimated, with Allen’s now roughly equivalent, and Lamar’s easily the best.

Instead of the best pass blocking and the best top two weapons, over the last two seasons, Mahomes has clearly had the worst weapons, and no advantage in pass blocking compared to Allen or Lamar.

In 2024, this hit rock bottom, with Travis Kelce, Xavier Worthy, and Deandre Hopkins combining for a 27.6 Receiver Rating, which was easily the worst receiver group of any season for Mahomes, Allen, or Lamar since at least 2019. His top two weapons rating was equally as bad, with Worthy and Hopkins combining for a shockingly poor 33.⁵ The offensive line remained very good, but wasn’t quite as dominant as years past, falling to 8th in PBWR in 2024.

With this downgrade in supporting cast, Mahomes went from the best production to clearly the worst.⁶

And 2024 was easily the worst of his career:

“Mahomes averaged 7.0 yards per pass, the worst of his career. He averaged 261.4 passing yards per game, the worst of his career. He threw a touchdown on 4.5 percent of his passes, the lowest of his career. He threw an interception on 2.3 percent of his passes, the highest of his career. His passer rating was 92.6, the worst of his career. He was sacked on 4.33 percent of his dropbacks, the most of his career.”

What do we make of this?

Considering the Long View

Essentially, Mahomes career arc looks like this:

• From 2018-2022, he simply destroyed any obstacle in his path, barring one Super Bowl performance with multiple backup offensive lineman, an ankle sprain, and numerous egregious drops.

• In 2023, we were concerned early, but the return of a dominant Kelce and the emergence of Rashee Rice down the stretch shattered those fears.⁷ After a Super Bowl victory with the perception that he had no talented receiving options, most were ready to crown Mahomes the new GOAT.⁸

• In 2024, the preseason hype was high, as the Super Bowl win plus the presence of Kelce, Rice, and the new weapons of Worthy and Hollywood seemed to indicate a return to the dominant passing attack glory days (of just two years ago). Unfortunately, the decline of Kelce, the injuries to (especially) Rice and Hollywood, and the slow emergence of Worthy showed that even Mahomes can be made human with a weak enough receiver group.

In sum, we now have five seasons of Mahomes destroying worlds, one regular season of him struggling with an older tight end and a rookie receiver as his top two options, but following that up with an elite postseason as his weapons improved, and one full season of him struggling with some of the worst receiving options in the league.

So, to me, there are two essential questions heading into the 2025 season:

1. Has the market changed its valuation of Mahomes?

2. Will his supporting cast be better in 2025?

Market Expectations for 2025

To answer question one, the market has certainly adjusted its valuation of Mahomes. In the early best ball contests on Underdog, Mahomes’ ADP has fallen to pick 73, which is about 30 spots lower than last year.

Again, since his breakout year, Mahomes has never been priced below pick 50. In short, the market has essentially decided that following the last two seasons of turmoil, Mahomes is not likely to produce the passing numbers of pre-2023 needed for him to perform like an elite fantasy quarterback.

And I get it. Mahomes doesn’t offer the dual-threat floor or ceiling of Allen, Lamar, Jalen Hurts, or Jayden Daniels. If we want elite fantasy production from Mahomes, we will almost certainly need one of those 40 touchdown seasons.

As for his supporting cast, there are certainly some concerns.

Will the Supporting Cast be better in 2025?

The Travis Kelce era is coming to a close, as he considers retirement. Even if Kelce returns, he’s likely a tertiary option in a good passing attack going forward, following a 2024 Receiver Rating of 17, by far the lowest of his career.

Similarly, Xavier Worthy did not light Receiver Rating on fire, with a score of 21. However, with a 55th percentile Open Score and a 45th percentile YAC Score, and strong fantasy performances down the stretch, there are some reasons for optimism. While I doubt Worthy can be a true #1 receiver, his deep target and YAC skillset fits well with Mahomes’ style and Andy Reid’s playcalling. If he does successfully fill that role, the Chiefs will probably have their most explosive weapon since the Tyreek Hill-era, even if Worthy is a far more limited player.⁹

Ultimately, though, much of Mahomes’ outlook hinges upon what happens with Rashee Rice. I’ve been both in and out on Rice over the last two seasons, as he’s been a polarizing player on the field and has done some dumb things off the field, which has led to a highly volatile ADP.

On the field, I struggled with how best to value him, as his rookie production was both a bit fluky and highly predictive of future success. The early returns of 2024 were impressive, as he was producing at a high rate and expanding his route tree, and seemingly placing him on more of an Amon-Ra St. Brown trajectory than the slot-only role that Juju Smith-Schuster never surpassed. However, Rice suffered a knee injury in week four that ended his season, and his recovery will be key (it sounds very positive so far). Off-the-field, Rice may be facing a suspension following his driving incident from last year, which could cost him somewhere between 0-6 games.

In short, I expect Mahomes’ weapons to be better in 2025, and I do think he rebounds from both a production and efficiency standpoint.

However, I would also assess it as unlikely that Mahomes returns to his early career production with this supporting cast. To do that, he probably needs to hit the parlay of Rice returning healthy, avoiding a large suspension, and either Worthy taking a step forward as a capable and explosive number two, or having Kelce or someone else resurge/emerge as a number two option. Instead, I’m viewing his 2021 season as the more realistic ceiling scenario.

In that scenario, Mahomes posts about 375 fantasy points, which would have ranked in the QB2-QB6 range last year. His current ADP is QB6 (though ~25 picks lower than QB5 Joe Burrow).

How to play it

Overall, I understand why the market is pricing Mahomes down this year. Quite simply, as it stands now, he’s unlikely to match his early career production needed to compete with the dual-threat elites. However, at pick 73, he doesn’t have to.

In that range, a Dak Prescott, Brock Purdy, or Aaron Rodgers style-season with a high-touchdown rate and some solid rushing production is more than enough to pay off that ADP. And no offense to those guys, but none of them offer the ceiling that Mahomes does. In the “if everything broke right scenarios”, where Rice returns healthy for a full season, Worthy takes a step, and some other player serves as a capable third-option or better¹⁰, Mahomes could easily produce another 40 touchdown season that makes us wonder why we spent the whole summer doubting him.

Bottom line: I think an ADP of 70 is slightly undervalued from a median standpoint, but the weekly and seasonal ceiling Mahomes offers makes him a compelling target. If his price holds, I expect to be overweight.

1. I also didn’t expect him to have an elite passing season in 2024, as the added weapons didn’t impress me as much as others, and took an underweight stance.

2. Last year, I expected that to clearly be Lamar, and the Ravens were one of my largest team bets.

3. Data courtesy of ESPN and RBSDM.com.
PBWR = Pass Block Win Rate
RBWR = Run Block Win Rate
Receiver Rating = average of the ratings of the 3 WR/TE with highest number of routes run
Top 2 Weapons = average of the two WR/TE with the highest rating.

4. In 2018, Kelce/Hill were the third best duo in the league in receiver rating. In 2020, second. In 2021, third again.

5. Kelce posted a receiver rating of only 17.

6. Barring a dominant 2023 postseason that speaks to the level of “gamer” that Mahomes and Kelce each are.

7. 2023 Kelce and Rice combined for a Top 2 Weapon rating of 61.5, which wasn’t *elite*, but still ranked as the 8th best duo in the league.

8. I, being a bit of a hater, was annoyed that the Chiefs defense, Andy Reid, Steve Spagnuolo, and Kelce/Rice didn’t get as much credit as I thought they should.

9. I used the Rotoviz Box Score Scout to try and come up with a good range of outcomes. I think the best high/mid/low is this:
High: Desean Jackson/Brandin Cooks
Mid: Hollywood Brown
Low: Rondale Moore/Elijah Moore

10. It also seems likely that the Chiefs will have to play more aggressive in 2025. Some defensive regression is likely and they probably won’t trying to hold on to one-score leads late in games as much.