Because of all the interest in this thread, I've place all of the video content of Patrick Mahomes II's college career, and draft day goodness into a single post that can be found here. Enjoy! [Reply]
Originally Posted by RealSNR:
Okay, thanks, Mr. Gabriel.
So we're back again to this bullshit of, "Deshaun Watson will be fine because Drew Brees doesn't have a rocket arm..."
If you throw with less velocity, you've simply GOT to make up for it in other areas. You have to be far more precise with timing and anticipation. You have to be account for the windows you're throwing into being a lot smaller and more quick to close. And most importantly, your throws have got to be on the money ****ing accurate. It's gotta operate like a ****ing clock.
Yes, strong armed QBs have to do all that stuff, too, but they can get away with a lot more. In the 5% of times when perhaps they're not quite on the money or they have things mistimed, they're at least going to be far less likely to be picked or have the play disrupted.
Deshaun Watson with his current velocity and the accuracy I saw out of him in college is NOT Drew Brees. Not. Even. ****ing. Close. Watson's accuracy is pretty good on short-mid throws and even some long ones, but he's always good for a few throws that are just ****ing not even goddamn close. And even his throw-to-throw accuracy is just good... it's not deadly good. It's not Drew Brees good.
Greg Gabriel knows more about scouting QBs than I do, but he's not very good with making this argument about velocity. If he wants his opinion to have any ****ing real meaning or value in QB assessment, he needs to compare some guys who AREN'T Drew Brees or Tom Brady whose velocity isn't the greatest. He doesn't have to pick a noodle arm ass**** like Tyler Palko or anybody like that, but you can't just go, "Bullshit! It doesn't matter because Drew Brees can do it!"
The average weak-armed QB prospect doesn't have the things that Drew Brees has in order to become successful in the NFL.
The dirty little secret a lot of these media people are unwilling to admit. Deshaun Watson was surrounded by a lot of talent at Clemson, including a strong OL, very good RB's, and very good receiving corps including a Top 7 pick.
These elements of the Clemson team helped mask some of Watson's flaws as a player. Heave up a weak 50-50 ball? No problem, big time receiver bails him out. He will also have help at the NFL level of course, but he won't have the deck stacked in his favor like he did in college.
Everyone brings up the Alabama games. Johnny Manziel torched Alabama two years in a row as well, then got his butt whipped at the NFL level because his arm was not good enough to make the kind of questionable throws he did in college. Deshaun will have to be smarter with his decision-making and more precise with his execution to help make up for the velocity issue. [Reply]
Watsons INT issues werrent because of his arm his reading of defenses sucked and he struggled on the white board when he met with us. The arm velocity thing is still a really stupid metric. [Reply]
Patrick Mahomes on third downs in 2016
76/115 (66.1%) 1225 yards, 10.65 YPA, 11 TDs 4 INTs 118.9 NFL QB Rating, 61 first downs
Rock hard
As I said before, PMII will be taught to play like Alex on 1st and 2nd down. Third down is where he"ll differ from Alex when with his natural throwing talent. [Reply]
Patrick Mahomes is Kansas City-bound after the Chiefs engineered a trade with the Bills to take him at No. 10 overall, which means he'll likely spend the coming season learning from Alex Smith. But it turns out Mahomes was oh so close to being bound for northern New Jersey to spend the coming season learning from Eli Manning.
ESPN's Anita Marks reported Friday that the Giants tried to trade up for Mahomes, but ultimately failed in that endeavor. Now, the Giants are "very upset."
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AnitaMarks ✔ @AnitaMarks
More confirmation today that the #Giants DID TRY AND TRADE UP for #Mahomes. Ben loves the kid. Very upset it didn't happen @AdamSchefter
5:07 PM - 28 Apr 2017 · Manhattan, NY
53 53 Retweets 47 47 likes
That would've been some trade. The Chiefs gave the Bills two first-round picks and a third-rounder to go from No. 27 to the 10th pick. So, the Giants likely would've been forced to part ways with something similar to that. In the end, the Giants stayed at No. 23 and picked tight end Evan Engram.
Tight end is a position of need for the Giants, but it's fascinating to wonder what would've happened if they had secured Mahomes. At 36, Manning is officially old by NFL quarterback standards, so it makes sense that the Giants were interested in acquiring their quarterback of the future, especially considering Mahomes likely needs a year or two to transition to the NFL. So no, Manning wouldn't have been supplanted this season, but it would've made for an interesting discussion next offseason. Instead, the Giants have Josh Johnson and Geno Smith as their backup quarterbacks.
Mahomes should be happy he went to Kansas City, because it'll be easier for him to beat out Smith. Smith's contract expires after the 2018 season, but he could still be cut after the coming season with his dead money at just $3.6 million, according to Spotrac. [Reply]
This guy named notnert427 wrote this on the Texas Tech forum. I thought it was insightful...
1:53 PM Last edited Friday at 2:54 PM by notnert427
I'm really, really excited for Pat. He deserves every bit of this. Selfishly, I wish he had stayed for one more year, but we all knew he was good enough to be drafted highly, and now he has been. Top ten first round is the kind of thing where I'll always understand the decision, happily thank a guy for playing for us, and wish him nothing but the best. To quote The Shawshank Redemption, "some birds aren't meant to be caged; their feathers are just too bright." That's undeniably true of Pat. He was a tremendous representative of Tech on and off the field. He played his heart out for us, and never complained once about the obvious weakness on the other side of the ball that kept him from receiving much of the national recognition he deserved in a situation where a ton of players would have. Pat should have been a Heisman candidate. He should have gotten Crabtree/Harrell levels of attention and more, but his surrounding cast simply wasn't good enough to make outsiders take notice.
I count myself lucky to have seen him play and give me so many memories I won't ever forget. That effort against Oklahoma is quite possibly the best game a college QB has ever played. I know Big 12 defense takes its lumps (and somewhat deservedly so), but that was still Oklahoma he was carving up in ridiculously impressive fashion. The same can be said for the effort against LSU in the Texas Bowl, where Pat was getting virtually zero blocking with two or three pass rushers just in his face immediately on seemingly every play to where he'd have to scramble about 15 yards backwards, throw off-balance, and try to fit passes in against some of the game's fastest/best DBs, and he still managed to somehow produce. It was clear he had something special that we'd see lots more of over the years in the 2014 game against Baylor, but enough of the painful losses. Mahomes would go on to beat UT in Austin in 2015, a rarity which tasted impossibly sweet, and he closed his Tech career on an extremely satisfying note by demolishing the much-hated Bears, which was a fitting end considering that his breakout game early on in his career came up just shy against Baylor.
Mahomes leaves as my #2 all-time favorite Red Raider behind only Welker. Pat is the most exciting football player I've ever watched. Every snap, you knew something special could happen, and it often did. The great tragedy is that it had to. Pat had to be consistently miraculous to keep us in games, and there were so many in which he did everything you can ask from a QB and then some, only to not be rewarded with the ultimate result of a team victory. His record as a starter is not remotely representative of his ability. I can only think of one or two games where I felt like the L was largely on him, and about a dozen in which he played well enough to win and probably would have with even a semblance of a pulse on the other side of the ball. It pains me to admit how much the program failed to capitalize on his abilities, but it is what it is. I'm still infinitely grateful to have had Pat here, and it will be an extreme disservice if his legacy here is marginalized or forgotten down the line based on the teams he was on. Pat was (and is) a special player, and should be remembered as such. Wearing the #5 jersey was some big shoes to fill, but Pat did a pretty damn great job of it.
Now, Pat will don a Chiefs jersey. That he was selected in the top 10 finally kills the dumb "stigma" about our QBs and the NFL, even though in reality, Symons, Kliff, and Harrell were the only three that ever actually had a shot. B.J. basically lost his career to injury, and Kliff and Graham both had decent tenure in the league, but couldn't overcome their lacking arm strength. Mahomes obviously has the arm strength in spades (even over B.J.'s cannon), has similar accuracy to Graham, and is every bit the gamer Kliff was. Mahomes' NFL career remains to be seen, but he broke through a bit of a glass ceiling here and has already massively helped our overall reputation and recruiting when it comes to QBs. Pat's the first who's been generally accepted from the outside as more than just stats or the system, and that's huge. No disrespect to our QBs who came before him and helped whittle that lame, dismissive argument down, but Mahomes just did what they couldn't and made a national splash as a legitimate talent beyond our walls. The really exciting part is that Pat hasn't come close to his ceiling yet and could very well be a superstar in the NFL and will get a real chance at being a "franchise QB" that no TTU QB in the past few decades has had.
Obviously KC loved him, but reports are that New Orleans, Cleveland (shudders), and Arizona were all ready to take him in the successive picks behind that slot even if they didn't. Also, Houston made their affinity for Pat well-known, and given that they traded up almost immediately to nab Watson sure sounds like a "s***, they got our guy, we better make a move on plan B" strategy to me. The point is, Pat was pretty widely regarded around the league, and he should have been. Mahomes made the rounds on all the sports talk shows, did all kinds of private workouts, and put on plenty of fun talent displays like tossing a 78-yard throw, beaning a Dan Patrick in the nose, throwing into ESPN buckets, etc. The consistent refrain was that the more time people spent around Pat, the more impressed they were. I love that the draftnik assclowns like Kiper, McShay, et al. whiffed big-time on the level of excitement around him across the league, as well as that Stephen A. Smith in his typical racist douchery is all irate that Mahomes was drafted before Watson. I love even more that there is so much positivity about KC trading up to get him from their franchise, fanbase, and from most after-the-fact analysis, save a few morons butthurt they got it wrong who are grasping at "he makes bad decisions sometimes" straws despite the fact that the supposedly more "polished" and "ready" Watson threw 7 more INTs than Mahomes in 2016 despite 12 fewer pass attempts. Moving on.
The excitement in KC is palpable. A perusal of their boards finds mostly off-the-charts enthusiasm, and it's not just the post-pick-rationalization type. Their fans were largely clamoring for him pre-draft and are thrilled they made the move to get him. I truly enjoy that many of them seem to have the same disdain for Alex Smith's "game manager" playing-scared crap that I do, and that many realize that they're winning arguably in spite of him. (No, I haven't forgiven Alex Smith for wasting much of Crabs' career.) Tyreek Hill fired the first shot across the bow from the KC roster with a simple smugface tweet, which is interesting given that KC got bounced from the playoffs last year in a game where Hill broke WIDE open twice for potential game-deciding scores, only to have Smith not find him due to his inability/unwillingness to throw deep. If you play fantasy football, whenever Pat takes the reins, Hill and Travis Kelce immediately become truly elite options. That may come sooner than later. I'll be shocked if Pat isn't starting in 2018, and I'm not ruling out that the staff will tire of Smith's timid/ineffectual crap sometime this season when they know they've got a true playmaker in Mahomes. Ideally, I'd like to see Pat not take the job quite yet. He's not half the project some make him out to be, but having a year to adjust to the NFL game speed and learn KC's offense could be huge. I'm reading through some lines here, but it sure seems like the entire KC organization is eager to send Smith out on the ice block the second Pat is ready, as they should.
I initially figured Pat would go to AZ at 13, which also would have been a pretty good fit, but I'm pretty thrilled with where Pat went. KC has invested pretty big in him, and they'll probably be more willing than anyone to let him sling it after becoming so used to Smith's vanilla garbage. They're going to fall even more in love with Pat the first time he launches a TD throw that Smith 1) won't even try and 2) could never make even if he did, at which point Pat will have the latitude to fire away, which is where he's at his best. KC really hit more of a homerun than they even know yet, but it was still all kinds of fun to see their draft parties go crazy as if a huge weight was just lifted off of their collective shoulders when the pick was announced. Contrast that with the extremely questionable choice by Chicago to trade a boatload to draft Trubisky (see: Ryan Tannehill, Mark Sanchez), which was deservedly reacted to with a bunch of facepalms and WTFs, and this comes from a group that has put up with Jay Cutler. To their credit, the Texans deserve some kudos for grabbing Watson (who is a very good player, just not with nearly the ceiling Pat has), but they could have made the move KC did and may well massively regret not doing so. Time will tell there, but KC hit the jackpot here, and perhaps Pat did as well. For all the Favre comparisons that were made of Pat leading up to the draft, ending up with Andy Reid seems fitting. Also, chalk up another reason there for KC to let Pat turn it loose when he gets his shot.
Pat sure seems to have the tools for success in the league. He's some amalgamation of Aaron Rodgers, Russell Wilson, and Ben Roethlisberger. That's pretty high praise, but I think it's apt. Mahomes has the ability of Rodgers and Wilson to buy time/create plays/effectively scramble when needed. The bonus is that he's got the ability and stones to just f***ing heave it and make that wow throw for six like Big Ben does. There is no ceiling if things fall into place. Provided Mahomes makes the adjustment to the pro game, he'll have a deep threat in Hill and a great possession guy in Kelce, and we know he can still produce even if the OL struggles (though KC has a decent line). Pat's a pretty bright kid who's already been the field general for an offense with tremendous success, so there's probably less concern about him grasping the KC offense than there is him simply getting used to the athleticism of the NFL. If that happens, watch out. Mahomes could legitimately become one of the best QBs in the league in a hurry. That's a bit cart before horse, but it is by no means out of the question. We probably won't find out until 2018 and beyond, but I couldn't be more excited to see him step on the field in the NFL. Hell, I can't wait to watch him in the preseason. I think that's true of a ton of people around the country, because Mahomes is must-see TV. The wait begins.... [Reply]
Originally Posted by rico:
This guy named notnert427 wrote this on the Texas Tech forum. I thought it was insightful...
1:53 PM Last edited Friday at 2:54 PM by notnert427
I'm really, really excited for Pat. He deserves every bit of this. Selfishly, I wish he had stayed for one more year, but we all knew he was good enough to be drafted highly, and now he has been. Top ten first round is the kind of thing where I'll always understand the decision, happily thank a guy for playing for us, and wish him nothing but the best. To quote The Shawshank Redemption, "some birds aren't meant to be caged; their feathers are just too bright." That's undeniably true of Pat. He was a tremendous representative of Tech on and off the field. He played his heart out for us, and never complained once about the obvious weakness on the other side of the ball that kept him from receiving much of the national recognition he deserved in a situation where a ton of players would have. Pat should have been a Heisman candidate. He should have gotten Crabtree/Harrell levels of attention and more, but his surrounding cast simply wasn't good enough to make outsiders take notice.
I count myself lucky to have seen him play and give me so many memories I won't ever forget. That effort against Oklahoma is quite possibly the best game a college QB has ever played. I know Big 12 defense takes its lumps (and somewhat deservedly so), but that was still Oklahoma he was carving up in ridiculously impressive fashion. The same can be said for the effort against LSU in the Texas Bowl, where Pat was getting virtually zero blocking with two or three pass rushers just in his face immediately on seemingly every play to where he'd have to scramble about 15 yards backwards, throw off-balance, and try to fit passes in against some of the game's fastest/best DBs, and he still managed to somehow produce. It was clear he had something special that we'd see lots more of over the years in the 2014 game against Baylor, but enough of the painful losses. Mahomes would go on to beat UT in Austin in 2015, a rarity which tasted impossibly sweet, and he closed his Tech career on an extremely satisfying note by demolishing the much-hated Bears, which was a fitting end considering that his breakout game early on in his career came up just shy against Baylor.
Mahomes leaves as my #2 all-time favorite Red Raider behind only Welker. Pat is the most exciting football player I've ever watched. Every snap, you knew something special could happen, and it often did. The great tragedy is that it had to. Pat had to be consistently miraculous to keep us in games, and there were so many in which he did everything you can ask from a QB and then some, only to not be rewarded with the ultimate result of a team victory. His record as a starter is not remotely representative of his ability. I can only think of one or two games where I felt like the L was largely on him, and about a dozen in which he played well enough to win and probably would have with even a semblance of a pulse on the other side of the ball. It pains me to admit how much the program failed to capitalize on his abilities, but it is what it is. I'm still infinitely grateful to have had Pat here, and it will be an extreme disservice if his legacy here is marginalized or forgotten down the line based on the teams he was on. Pat was (and is) a special player, and should be remembered as such. Wearing the #5 jersey was some big shoes to fill, but Pat did a pretty damn great job of it.
Now, Pat will don a Chiefs jersey. That he was selected in the top 10 finally kills the dumb "stigma" about our QBs and the NFL, even though in reality, Symons, Kliff, and Harrell were the only three that ever actually had a shot. B.J. basically lost his career to injury, and Kliff and Graham both had decent tenure in the league, but couldn't overcome their lacking arm strength. Mahomes obviously has the arm strength in spades (even over B.J.'s cannon), has similar accuracy to Graham, and is every bit the gamer Kliff was. Mahomes' NFL career remains to be seen, but he broke through a bit of a glass ceiling here and has already massively helped our overall reputation and recruiting when it comes to QBs. Pat's the first who's been generally accepted from the outside as more than just stats or the system, and that's huge. No disrespect to our QBs who came before him and helped whittle that lame, dismissive argument down, but Mahomes just did what they couldn't and made a national splash as a legitimate talent beyond our walls. The really exciting part is that Pat hasn't come close to his ceiling yet and could very well be a superstar in the NFL and will get a real chance at being a "franchise QB" that no TTU QB in the past few decades has had.
Obviously KC loved him, but reports are that New Orleans, Cleveland (shudders), and Arizona were all ready to take him in the successive picks behind that slot even if they didn't. Also, Houston made their affinity for Pat well-known, and given that they traded up almost immediately to nab Watson sure sounds like a "s***, they got our guy, we better make a move on plan B" strategy to me. The point is, Pat was pretty widely regarded around the league, and he should have been. Mahomes made the rounds on all the sports talk shows, did all kinds of private workouts, and put on plenty of fun talent displays like tossing a 78-yard throw, beaning a Dan Patrick in the nose, throwing into ESPN buckets, etc. The consistent refrain was that the more time people spent around Pat, the more impressed they were. I love that the draftnik assclowns like Kiper, McShay, et al. whiffed big-time on the level of excitement around him across the league, as well as that Stephen A. Smith in his typical racist douchery is all irate that Mahomes was drafted before Watson. I love even more that there is so much positivity about KC trading up to get him from their franchise, fanbase, and from most after-the-fact analysis, save a few morons butthurt they got it wrong who are grasping at "he makes bad decisions sometimes" straws despite the fact that the supposedly more "polished" and "ready" Watson threw 7 more INTs than Mahomes in 2016 despite 12 fewer pass attempts. Moving on.
The excitement in KC is palpable. A perusal of their boards finds mostly off-the-charts enthusiasm, and it's not just the post-pick-rationalization type. Their fans were largely clamoring for him pre-draft and are thrilled they made the move to get him. I truly enjoy that many of them seem to have the same disdain for Alex Smith's "game manager" playing-scared crap that I do, and that many realize that they're winning arguably in spite of him. (No, I haven't forgiven Alex Smith for wasting much of Crabs' career.) Tyreek Hill fired the first shot across the bow from the KC roster with a simple smugface tweet, which is interesting given that KC got bounced from the playoffs last year in a game where Hill broke WIDE open twice for potential game-deciding scores, only to have Smith not find him due to his inability/unwillingness to throw deep. If you play fantasy football, whenever Pat takes the reins, Hill and Travis Kelce immediately become truly elite options. That may come sooner than later. I'll be shocked if Pat isn't starting in 2018, and I'm not ruling out that the staff will tire of Smith's timid/ineffectual crap sometime this season when they know they've got a true playmaker in Mahomes. Ideally, I'd like to see Pat not take the job quite yet. He's not half the project some make him out to be, but having a year to adjust to the NFL game speed and learn KC's offense could be huge. I'm reading through some lines here, but it sure seems like the entire KC organization is eager to send Smith out on the ice block the second Pat is ready, as they should.
I initially figured Pat would go to AZ at 13, which also would have been a pretty good fit, but I'm pretty thrilled with where Pat went. KC has invested pretty big in him, and they'll probably be more willing than anyone to let him sling it after becoming so used to Smith's vanilla garbage. They're going to fall even more in love with Pat the first time he launches a TD throw that Smith 1) won't even try and 2) could never make even if he did, at which point Pat will have the latitude to fire away, which is where he's at his best. KC really hit more of a homerun than they even know yet, but it was still all kinds of fun to see their draft parties go crazy as if a huge weight was just lifted off of their collective shoulders when the pick was announced. Contrast that with the extremely questionable choice by Chicago to trade a boatload to draft Trubisky (see: Ryan Tannehill, Mark Sanchez), which was deservedly reacted to with a bunch of facepalms and WTFs, and this comes from a group that has put up with Jay Cutler. To their credit, the Texans deserve some kudos for grabbing Watson (who is a very good player, just not with nearly the ceiling Pat has), but they could have made the move KC did and may well massively regret not doing so. Time will tell there, but KC hit the jackpot here, and perhaps Pat did as well. For all the Favre comparisons that were made of Pat leading up to the draft, ending up with Andy Reid seems fitting. Also, chalk up another reason there for KC to let Pat turn it loose when he gets his shot.
Pat sure seems to have the tools for success in the league. He's some amalgamation of Aaron Rodgers, Russell Wilson, and Ben Roethlisberger. That's pretty high praise, but I think it's apt. Mahomes has the ability of Rodgers and Wilson to buy time/create plays/effectively scramble when needed. The bonus is that he's got the ability and stones to just f***ing heave it and make that wow throw for six like Big Ben does. There is no ceiling if things fall into place. Provided Mahomes makes the adjustment to the pro game, he'll have a deep threat in Hill and a great possession guy in Kelce, and we know he can still produce even if the OL struggles (though KC has a decent line). Pat's a pretty bright kid who's already been the field general for an offense with tremendous success, so there's probably less concern about him grasping the KC offense than there is him simply getting used to the athleticism of the NFL. If that happens, watch out. Mahomes could legitimately become one of the best QBs in the league in a hurry. That's a bit cart before horse, but it is by no means out of the question. We probably won't find out until 2018 and beyond, but I couldn't be more excited to see him step on the field in the NFL. Hell, I can't wait to watch him in the preseason. I think that's true of a ton of people around the country, because Mahomes is must-see TV. The wait begins....
Originally Posted by KChiefs1:
He was great even as a freshman at TT.
youtu.be/rSgH0EehRGQ
youtu.be/v3adYt8H4jA
Baylor game in 2014 scared Jarrett Stidham into switching his commitment. He wanted to play immediately. Was verbally committed to Tech for 8 months and I guess was confident he could beat Davis Webb for playing time. Saw Mahomes up close at Cowboys Stadium against Baylor and realized he had no chance to play for the next two seasons due to fact Mahomes himself was only a true freshman. Mahomes hit about four deep ball TD's in that Baylor game and damn near beat a #7 ranked team as a true freshman. Tech had a losing record that season, so pretty obvious he didn't have a great team around him.
Stidham was a consensus Top 40 national recruit in 247 Sports "composite" rating of all the different recruiting services:
He switched to Baylor for three reasons: playing time, much better team, and a magical brand new truck that he started showing on Twitter the day he switched his commitment. He is now at Auburn due to the Baylor rape scandal.
Stidham showed some pretty good ability at Baylor, but zero chance he would have seen the field at Tech with Mahomes in the way. I think he made a pretty good decision to not sign with Tech, although maybe should have gone somewhere other than Baylor considering the rape scandal. I'm curious to see how he does at Auburn. He has NFL potential. Very good arm and mobility. [Reply]
