Patrick Mahomes May Be Lucky But Tom Brady Is Still the LOAT (Luckiest of All Time): Part 4 – Through Sickness and Health
The Kansas City Chiefs are 13-1, tying the best record in NFL history for a defending champion, after beating the Cleveland Browns 21-7. After finally getting takeaways, it was the first time all season that the Chiefs comfortably led an entire second half by at least two touchdowns. However, the focus of the three-peat immediately shifted to the health of quarterback Patrick Mahomes after he was knocked out in the fourth quarter on this high-and-low hit:
Mahomes limped off and Carson Wentz finished the game. Mahomes has been diagnosed with a mild high-ankle sprain, which reportedly isn’t as bad as the one he played through in the 2022 postseason when the Chiefs won the Super Bowl. He missed a quarter of action that time before returning for the second half against Jacksonville and finishing the game.
The good news is Mahomes has avoided a significant injury, and the practice signs are pointing to him playing this Saturday in an important game against Houston, which boasts an elite pass rush. But we’ll get into the challenges ahead for the Chiefs as they manage Mahomes’ latest leg injury at the end here.
This is Part 4 of the LOAT series, and I hate to say I foreshadowed this result last week in Part 3 when I said that Part 4 “could be looking at health with the Chiefs about to embark on a grueling schedule of three games played 10 days apart.” Mahomes even spoke publicly last week that he didn’t have a good feeling about this risky scheduling quirk from the NFL that is putting the Chiefs, Ravens, Steelers, and Texans – all major AFC contenders – through a real grind by playing so many key games this close together.
“It’s not a good feeling,” Mahomes said last Wednesday. “You never want to play this amount of games in this short of time. It’s not great for your body. But at the end of the day it’s your job, your profession, you have to come to work and do it.”
Well, Mahomes’ body didn’t finish the job in the first game of this stretch, and we’ll see how the rest of it goes. But before we do that, we wanted to look at the importance of health to a quarterback’s career, why it’s sometimes a matter of luck, and why no one in their right mind would ever say that Mahomes is luckier than Tom Brady, the LOAT (Luckiest of All Time).
In case you missed the first three parts of the LOAT series:
- Patrick Mahomes May Be Lucky But Tom Brady Is Still the LOAT (Luckiest of All Time): Part 1 – Clutch Kicking
- Patrick Mahomes May Be Lucky But Tom Brady Is Still the LOAT (Luckiest of All Time): Part 2 – Defense Holding Leads
- Patrick Mahomes May Be Lucky But Tom Brady Is Still the LOAT (Luckiest of All Time): Part 3 – Division Rivals
Table of Contents
Health Is Everything for NFL Players
The best ability is availability.
Eighty percent of success is showing up.
Health is the real wealth in sports.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Champions train, losers complain, but even champions must rest and recover.
All of these famous quotes and idioms can apply to professional athletes, especially in a contact sport like football where injuries are so rampant. If you are not in good health, you’re either not going to play or your play could be severely compromised. Most players always push to play too, because they know they can lose their job if they’re out and their replacement does well.
Just ask Drew Bledsoe as his 2001 injury is probably the only reason we’re even talking about Tom Brady in 2024.
That’s what makes the NFL such a cutthroat business. But you already have to be wired differently to get into professional football. Miami quarterback Tua Tagovailoa suffered his fourth NFL concussion in September, and he was very adamant about not retiring after many urged him to consider doing so for his family and future. He’s back and leading the league in completion percentage.
But some players are never the same after injury.
We’ve spent a lot of time talking about Brady’s status as the LOAT, but what about some of the unluckiest quarterbacks in NFL history? Teddy Bridgewater has to be in that conversation. He slid in the 2014 draft way further than he deserved. Then after leading the Vikings to the playoffs in his second season, he lost a frigid playoff game by a 10-9 score after his kicker (Blair Walsh) missed a 27-yard field goal.
Instead of coming back stronger for his third season in 2016, in a late August practice, Bridgewater suffered a non-contact injury where he tore his ACL and dislocated his knee joint. He did not start another game in the NFL until 2018 and his career was robbed of ever reaching its full potential. That’s all stemming from a non-contact injury in practice that could have happened to anyone in any week from training camp through the end of the season.
That’s the scariest thing about injuries in the NFL. They can happen to anyone on any play.
Hell, it doesn’t even need to be a play. San Francisco linebacker Dre Greenlaw tore his Achilles just trying to run onto the field for a possession in February’s Super Bowl loss against the Chiefs. He only returned to action last week.
For that matter, you don’t have to be at a football activity to get hurt. In 2002, Denver quarterback Brian Griese sprained his ankle at home after tripping over his dog on the stairs. He still played against the Ravens a few nights later, and he threw three interceptions in a 34-23 loss. Guess the dog had to sleep outside the rest of the season.
Our health is absolutely crucial for all of us to perform well, but it’s especially important to athletes as their bodies are their money-makers. This week’s episode of HBO’s Hard Knocks did a great job of detailing some of the treatments players get weekly to keep their bodies going. Pittsburgh quarterback Russell Wilson told a great story about how paying a total of $6,000 for a few weekly massages during his rookie season would help him eventually earn $60 million and more on contracts as long as his body was right for the job.
Health is everything, but even the most careful athlete on the strictest diet with a fantastic fitness regiment can’t guarantee he won’t fall victim to a serious injury. Not in this game.
That’s why there is a strong luck component at work here too.
Is Staying Healthy a Matter of Luck for an NFL Quarterback?
You could be the safest driver in the world, but if a few morons come screaming down the road at 120 miles per hour in an illegal street race, you risk losing your life in a collision even if you’ve done nothing wrong.
There’s only so much we can control about what happens around us, and that’s true for injuries in football. Due to the violent and sometimes random nature of the sport, you’re not always going to escape a football play without injury even if you technically did nothing wrong.
That’s why if you manage to have a long NFL career with minimal injuries, you should count your lucky stars. Not everyone has that experience and it’s not always their fault.
We’re going to focus on just the quarterback position for the rest of this since they play the game much differently from an offensive lineman or linebacker or punter. Quarterbacks usually want to get the ball out in under three seconds and do what they can to protect themselves from taking bad hits.
A player who receives the “injury-prone” label may in fact just be unlucky. Take the case of Matthew Stafford, who was considered injury-prone after he missed 19 games in his first two seasons in Detroit. But starting in 2011, Stafford started the next 136 games (139 including playoffs), the seventh-longest streak in NFL history. So, was he ever injury-prone, or was it just some early bad luck? We could end up seeing something similar happen to Joe Burrow in Cincinnati after some early injuries in his career.
Granted, there are certain things a quarterback can do to expose themselves to more injuries. A lot of this stems from mobile passers refusing to give up on plays and extending things with their legs. That can sometimes lead to bigger hits, more dangerous hits with the body in a more vulnerable or awkward position, and unnecessary contact because they didn’t get the ball away in time. There’s a reason Tagovailoa was criticized for his latest concussion after he led with his head right into the chest of Damar Hamlin (of all people) instead of sliding down after he got the first down in Week 2.
A failure to protect his body was actually a pre-draft criticism of Washington rookie Jayden Daniels, who had videos made about his college performances set to sounds from Looney Tunes with the comical way he took hits:
So far, he’s done a pretty good job of sliding and protecting himself in the NFL. He did get knocked out of the Carolina game with a rib injury that likely lingered for several weeks, but he hasn’t missed a start yet and is all but a lock for Offensive Rookie of the Year.
Speaking of promising rookie quarterbacks in Washington, who can forget what happened to Robert Griffin III in 2012 under coach Mike Shanahan? He had an LCL sprain in December, missed a full game, controversially returned at less than 100%, and started the team’s playoff game that year against Seattle.
But even after showing signs that he was badly hobbled during the game, Griffin was not removed. In the fourth quarter, he tore his ACL and LCL trying to reach for a low snap. It was a total fluke of a play, but the situation leading up to it was no fluke. Washington badly managed that situation, and Griffin’s career was never the same. He could have been doing Lamar Jackson things years before you ever heard of Lamar.
Today’s group of quarterbacks are the most mobile and athletic in NFL history. That’s also probably why we aren’t seeing many long streaks of consecutive starts as little injury problems are popping up more often.
But one mobile passer who beat the odds was Russell Wilson in Seattle. Drafted in 2012, Wilson started the first 149 games of his career (165 including playoffs), the sixth-longest streak in NFL history and the longest by a quarterback who wasn’t just a pocket passer.
You might think a scramble or ill-timed sack ended Wilson’s streak in 2021 when he suffered his first significant NFL injury. But you’d be wrong. It was a dislocated finger on his throwing hand after his follow-through hit Aaron Donald’s hand on a pass play from the pocket that was on time.
It’s a shock this type of play doesn’t happen every single week to a quarterback in the NFL with how close pass rushers get to them multiple times a game. Whether the hand hits another hand or a defender’s helmet, it truly is hard to believe this is the one time in over 6,300 career throws that Wilson did this to fracture a finger and miss time for it.
That just goes to show you that an injury can happen on any play whether the quarterback threw the ball on time or not regardless if they were in the pocket or not.
Tom Brady’s Brief Injury History
Tom Brady’s best ability truly may have been his availability to his teams. You can credit everything from his quick release to the TB12 diet to whatever supplements shady trainer Alex Guerrero may have squirted into his smoothies, but Brady was unusually healthy for 23 years in the NFL.
Sure, it was a running joke for years that the Patriots would list him as probable with a shoulder injury every week (at least 116 times through 2016), but that was just your typical Bill Belichick gamesmanship with the injury reports.
But it’s impossible not to say good luck didn’t play a factor too. Not eating strawberries isn’t going to help you avoid a pass rusher taking out your knee while your plant leg is stiff as the ball was released.
In fact, that’s the only way someone ever knocked Brady out of a season when it happened in the first quarter of the first game in 2008 against Kansas City. Bernard Pollard crashed into Brady’s leg as he threw a deep ball and it led to a torn ACL that knocked Brady out for the whole season:
https://twitter.com/bostonsportsinf/status/1699572239354490882
The crazy thing is Pollard would later go on to be involved in plays that saw Brady’s favorite target Wes Welker tore his ACL as well as a high-ankle sprain for Rob Gronkowski. Pollard was a Patriot Killer in that era, and oh yeah, he was even the last person to tackle Aaron Hernandez in a game.
A torn ACL was nothing new for quarterbacks in this era. It happened to Carson Palmer (2005 Bengals) in a playoff game against the Steelers, and it also happened to Donovan McNabb on the 2006 Eagles. In fact, the Palmer injury led to the “Carson Palmer Rule” in 2006 to try to get defenders to avoid those low hits, like Pollard’s on Brady, on quarterbacks who are throwing the ball.
But you could argue that Brady’s 2008 torn ACL was the unluckiest moment in his career.
It came at a time when the Patriots were coming off their 18-1 season. Brady was in his physical prime, had just won his first MVP, and had that duo of Randy Moss and Wes Welker back. He could have posted some huge numbers that year too.
The AFC was also there for the taking with a Pittsburgh team, the eventual Super Bowl champion, featuring a weak offensive line and a defense that was always vulnerable to Brady’s style of attack. A Jeff Fisher-coached Titans team was the No. 1 seed that year, and Peyton Manning was carrying a one-man show in Indianapolis that would have struggled on the road as a wild-card team if it had to play in New England. The 2008 Cardinals were also arguably the worst team to ever reach the Super Bowl, so Brady could have won a fourth ring much sooner that year if the ACL didn’t happen.
It also had a bit of a lingering effect on Brady in 2009 and 2010 as he was more prone to phantom pressures, sometimes ducking in the pocket and not wanting to get hit. He had two of his worst postseasons in those years as well.
Other than 2008’s ACL costing him 15 full games, the only other time Brady was knocked out of a game by injury was the 2001 AFC Championship Game in Pittsburgh. That’s a pretty big one since it was in the second quarter, the Patriots were only leading 7-3 thanks to a special teams return touchdown, and Brady was knocked out on completion and replaced by Drew Bledsoe, who directed the 24-17 win to send the Patriots to the Super Bowl against the Rams, which Brady returned to play and win for his first ring.
To this day, Bledsoe is the only quarterback to ever come off the bench and throw more than 15 passes in a playoff game for a team that went on to win the Super Bowl. When Brady returned to face the Steelers in the 2004 AFC Championship Game, he played that game with the flu, his version of a Michael Jordan “Flu Game.” He played far better that day in a 41-27 win.
The only other “injury” of note is the purported fully torn MCL that Brady played with for the entire 2020 season, his first year with Tampa Bay, a season that ended with a Super Bowl win. This story is confusing though as Brady said it was an issue he dealt with in April or May 2020, got through the season with it, then had surgery after the Super Bowl win. But in another report, Brady asserts he suffered the injury in 2019 in his final season with the Patriots.
Brady appeared just once on the injury report for the 2019 Patriots with an elbow issue in Week 12. He never appeared once on Tampa Bay’s 2020 injury report, so if he had this injury, it was never disclosed either season, which would be a team violation in the NFL.
If it happened, maybe that can explain why Brady was just 11-10 as a starter who averaged 6.5 yards per pass attempt between the back half of 2019 and that 7-5 start with Tampa before turning things around.
Remember, health is everything, and Brady was fortunate to be available so often for his team over 23 seasons. He may not be the LOAT when it comes to health but consider what the alternative could have been. Someone like Minnesota rookie J.J. McCarthy is a Michigan man too and he already missed his entire rookie season after tearing his meniscus after one preseason game.
If Bernard Pollard wasn’t the New England Boogeyman, Brady may have never missed a game due to injury in 23 years.
Patrick Mahomes’ Injury History: Is He Gumby?
Patrick Mahomes is no stranger to injuries from the knee and below in his NFL career. They even seem to be most prominent in his seasons with Super Bowl runs as they occurred in 2019, 2020, and 2022.
But so far, the only injury to keep him from starting games was the dislocated kneecap that happened in Denver in 2019. He left that game early and missed the next two games before returning to guide the Chiefs to their first Super Bowl win.
You can say Mahomes is lucky to only miss two starts to injury in his career so far, but you have to be pretty unlucky to dislocate your kneecap on a quarterback sneak, the most effective short-yardage play in the game. Those plays look like a rugby scrum, but they’re usually safe for the quarterback.
Alex Smith suffered a concussion on a sneak when he was with the 49ers in 2012, one of the other rare injuries reported by a quarterback on that play. Between Smith’s concussion and Mahomes’ dislocated kneecap, it’s no wonder that coach Andy Reid has virtually banned Mahomes from running the sneak, which has become an even more advantageous play in recent years because of the Tush Push popularized by the Eagles where they shove Jalen Hurts forward from behind. You won’t see the Chiefs do that with Mahomes, and you have to wonder if that’ll ever come back to bite them in a big spot.
But besides the dislocated kneecap in 2019, there are two other games that Mahomes was injured in, and they just so happened to be divisional-round playoff games at home.
In the 2020 AFC divisional round against Cleveland, Mahomes looked shaken and wobbly in the third quarter. He left the game and did not return.
This was not a concussion but a nerve issue in the neck that caused him to look disoriented. That can happen when the vagus nerve is pinched. Mahomes played the following week against the Bills in the AFC Championship Game and played very well.
In the 2022 AFC divisional round against Jacksonville, Mahomes was injured on the second drive after looking fantastic with his mobility to start the game. Once again, his postseason looked to be in doubt before he was able to return after the x-ray showed he didn’t fracture his ankle as captured by this memorable scene in the Netflix series Quarterback:
Mahomes only missed the second quarter before returning to throw a touchdown pass and lead the Chiefs to a win. He finished the playoffs on a high note and even scrambled on both game-winning drives against the Bengals and Eagles before winning his second Super Bowl and cementing 2022 as the greatest season of his career.
Now here we go again with the playoffs coming and Mahomes nursing another high-ankle issue. This one is not supposed to be as bad as the 2022 playoffs, so it sounds like he is going to play Saturday and won’t miss a game for this.
It’s a good thing his legs seem to be made out of flexible clay like the character Gumby. Mahomes tends to just tape up his ankles and get back out there. Similar to how the NBA’s LeBron James looks like he suffers a season-ending injury, then he just ties his shoes tighter and he’s good to go again.
Some guys are just built different.
How Brady and Mahomes Stack Up to Other Quarterbacks in Health
Mahomes’ latest ankle injury happened in his 128th start. Would you believe that Brady’s torn ACL in 2008 happened in his 128th start? It really did. But while that one ended Brady’s season, it looks like Mahomes will be okay.
So, how does this stack up with other quarterback greats and active players? Let’s look at a pair of tables that will show different things.
Legends of the Game and Their Health
The first table looks at 18 notable quarterbacks, which includes Mahomes, Brady, the top 15 all-time leaders in touchdown passes (playoffs included), all 13 quarterbacks to start at least 220 games, and a couple of Brady’s retired peers like Andrew Luck and Tony Romo since I already had their data.
This table shows “Injuries” as the number of injury incidents that caused the quarterback to miss a start. It does not include injuries where the quarterback was knocked out of the game and started the following game like Brady in the 2001 playoffs or Mahomes in the 2020 playoffs. “INJ Gms” is how many starts the quarterback missed due to injury. “Starts” is how many games they started in their career (playoffs included), and the “Ratio” is the ratio between starts and starts missed due to injury.
| Quarterback | Injuries | INJ Gms | Starts | Ratio |
| Philip Rivers | 0 | 0 | 252 | – |
| Eli Manning | 0 | 0 | 246 | – |
| Brett Favre | 2 | 3 | 322 | 107.3 |
| Matt Ryan | 2 | 3 | 244 | 81.3 |
| Patrick Mahomes | 1 | 2 | 128 | 64.0 |
| Drew Brees | 3 | 10 | 304 | 30.4 |
| Fran Tarkenton | 3 | 9 | 250 | 27.8 |
| Tom Brady | 1 | 15 | 381 | 25.4 |
| Russell Wilson | 4 | 10 | 212 | 21.2 |
| John Elway | 10 | 14 | 252 | 18.0 |
| Peyton Manning | 2 | 22 | 292 | 13.3 |
| Dan Marino | 4 | 21 | 258 | 12.3 |
| Ben Roethlisberger | 10 | 30 | 270 | 9.0 |
| Aaron Rodgers | 6 | 34 | 259 | 7.6 |
| Matthew Stafford | 8 | 36 | 228 | 6.3 |
| Tony Romo | 7 | 36 | 133 | 3.7 |
| Andrew Luck | 3 | 26 | 94 | 3.6 |
| Joe Montana | 15 | 55 | 187 | 3.4 |
By this metric in this sample, Brady is about the middle of the pack. Had he torn his ACL very late in the season like when Derek Carr broke his leg in 2016 with a game to go before the playoffs, then he’d be way up there with those two guys who never missed a start to injury. But since Brady’s injury was in Week 1, he gets a solid 15-game absence.
But Philip Rivers ranking at the top as some hint that he’s the luckiest quarterback in NFL history with health is deeply ironic, especially in the context of Brady’s career. While it’s true that Rivers was an ironman who started all 252 games in 2006-2020, it must sting to know that he was injured during the most significant postseason of his career with the 2007 Chargers.
Rivers tore his ACL in the AFC divisional round in Indianapolis after throwing a touchdown pass. He was replaced in the fourth quarter by Billy Volek, who led the Chargers to a comeback upset win. But Rivers still decided to return and play on a torn ACL in the AFC Championship Game in New England against Brady and the undefeated Patriots. Even though Brady threw three interceptions in that game, Rivers threw two and couldn’t move the offense well in a 21-12 loss.
Go figure, the only documented case of a quarterback coming back to play on a torn ACL a week after suffering it in the playoffs and it’s a championship game that Brady won. That’s why he’s the LOAT.
But they may have called Brady the GOAT sooner if Eli Manning was the one trying to play on a torn ACL in Super Bowl XLII two weeks later. Brady always beat Rivers even when he was healthy. Eli’s Giants gave Brady fits, and the younger Manning upset him twice in the big game while never missing a start to injury in his career.
Sure, we can bring up the 2010 preseason video where Eli got bloody like he was Ric Flair at Starrcade, but that didn’t lead to any missed real-time.
You could argue Eli was the LOAT when it came to health for a quarterback, but I might still give that title to Brett Favre. His infamous Ironman streak was 297 straight starts in the regular season, 57 more than Rivers, and it was 321 games including playoffs (69 more than Rivers). He didn’t miss a game to injury until late in his final season when he was 41 and washed up with retirement to come in a few weeks. Granted, the painkillers likely helped in the 90s, so maybe it deserves an asterisk.
But getting older obviously makes it harder to recover faster. That’s the craziest part about Brady’s streak. Had it not been for his Deflategate suspension in 2016, he would have started the final 256 games of his career in 2009-2022.
Peyton Manning was someone who was extremely durable for most of his career, missing one play due to injury in his time with the Colts where he started his first 227 games. However four neck surgeries caused him to miss the entire 2011 season, and the strain that put on his body in later years as he tried to compensate for the diminished arm strength led to leg injuries with his quad (2014) and a plantar fascia injury in 2015.
Drew Brees was also extremely durable, missing one game to injury before he turned 40. That’s a little misleading since he did suffer a torn labrum in the final game of 2005, which led to his arrival in New Orleans after a team like Miami didn’t think he was healthy enough to pay. But starting in 2019, he had a couple of injuries that cost him nine games total. Oddly enough, his issues with his ribs and a collapsed lung started from hits he took against Brady’s Buccaneers in a blowout win in 2020. Even when Brady lost, he sometimes won in the end. Brees’ last NFL game was a 30-20 home playoff loss to Brady’s Bucs.
If you go back to an older generation that predates Brady, you have to marvel at John Elway missing 14 games related to 10 different injuries. This guy sat out for the flu twice in his career, which sounds unheard of now. There was also a game in 1998 where Elway, in his final season, went out to warm up before the game and pulled something in his back, so they sat him down that day and still won. He avoided any long-term injuries in his career as his longest absence was four games in 1992 for a shoulder injury.
Dan Marino was very durable for 11 seasons until he tore his Achilles in 1993, a huge blow as the Dolphins were 4-1 and Marino was off to a fantastic start. He might have been able to end Buffalo’s reign of four straight Super Bowl appearances that year without that injury.
But if we’re going to talk about the GOAT and pulling off a three-peat, we have to highlight the great Joe Montana missing 55 games to 15 injuries in his career. The most significant of those injuries came in the 1991 preseason when an elbow injury cost Montana the entire season and all but one game in 1992, as well as Steve Young, officially took over the starting job in San Francisco.
But let’s not forget that in 1990, Montana was MVP and trying to achieve the first Super Bowl three-peat with the 49ers. They were leading in the fourth quarter of the NFC Championship Game against the Giants, but Montana was injured on a sack. Running back Roger Craig fumbled the ball late and the Giants went on to kick a game-winning field goal. Young probably would have had to start the Super Bowl if the 49ers held on, so that could have really changed the course of NFL history.
Active Starting Quarterbacks and Their Health
Next, here is a chart of career injuries that led to missed starts for 31 active starting quarterbacks. Every team is represented except for the Raiders, who let’s face it, never had a real quarterback plan for 2024. However, Gardner Minshew and Aidan O’Connell have both been injured multiple times in their careers already.
While someone like Brock Purdy missed his first official game to injury this year against Green Bay, let’s not forget that he had a very serious elbow injury in the 2022 NFC Championship Game in Philadelphia where he couldn’t throw the ball after the first drive.
But everyone here has already missed at least one start except for the four main rookies (Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels, Drake Maye, and Bo Nix). We’ll see how long they last. Again, J.J. McCarthy made it one preseason game.
For 2024, Dak Prescott (hamstring), Deshaun Watson (Achilles), and Trevor Lawrence (concussion) are already nursing season-ending injuries with Derek Carr (hand) likely to join them. Joe Burrow and Lamar Jackson have both had two season-ending injuries already, so it’s good to see them staying healthy for 2024 to this point.
I did not mention Aaron Rodgers before in the legends section, but he’s obviously had three major injuries with two collarbone fractures (2013 and 2017) and the shock of lasting four snaps with the 2023 Jets before he tore his Achilles on opening night. All three injuries looked like routine plays that could have happened to anyone, so he’s definitely not the health LOAT.
As for the quarterback with the longest active consecutive starts streak, that belongs to Buffalo’s Josh Allen at 102 games in the regular season and 112 total, the 13th-longest streak in NFL history. That’s impressive given his physical dual-threat style. Allen hasn’t missed a game since an elbow issue in his 2018 rookie season.
The Potential Impact of the Latest Mahomes Injury
As much as people want to focus their attention on teams like the Bills and Eagles for the Super Bowl, the Chiefs have the best record in the NFL and are still very much a contender as they eye the historic three-peat.
But it’s been a year filled with injuries, and you had to feel like the Chiefs could overcome them as long as Mahomes stays upright. The problem is they haven’t been protecting him well, and he’s taking hits at a rate we’re not used to seeing from any quarterback, let alone one like Mahomes:
Mahomes finished the last game without taking a sack despite 11 quarterback hits by Cleveland, the most in a game this season for a defense that didn’t get a sack. But it did lead to a high-ankle sprain, and now that is the attention in Kansas City with the three-peat at its biggest risk yet.
The Chiefs probably are not going to the Super Bowl if they don’t get the No. 1 seed this year. They may have won in Buffalo and Baltimore last year, but this team is more injured, they have more issues in the secondary and at offensive tackle, and they have been going at it since their early bye in Week 6, so they need that time off more than ever.
But to do so, they are probably going to need to finish 2-1 since the Bills only have to beat the Jets and Patriots (twice) to finish 14-3. The Chiefs must finish 15-2 or better since they lost the head-to-head tiebreaker in Buffalo already.
That means Mahomes, who won’t be 100% this week, is going to have to suck it up and beat the Texans, who boast an elite pass rush, then possibly beat the Steelers in Pittsburgh with T.J. Watt just four days later on Christmas in a rare Wednesday game.
This is really where the NFL’s bold plan to force four major AFC contenders into playing huge games on short rest is hurting everyone. Well, it’s helping Buffalo and NFC hopefuls, but it’s definitely not helping these four playoff-bound teams.
If the Chiefs were facing the Raiders this Saturday, they could absolutely afford to start Carson Wentz and give Mahomes the day off, and maybe get him back for Pittsburgh. But with a division winner like Houston and that pass rush, you hate to see Wentz taking sacks behind this line in that kind of matchup. It’s likely going to be Mahomes, and then you just hope you get the win and he doesn’t aggravate the injury going to Pittsburgh in another game you really could use a win in unless you want to have to go full throttle in Denver in Week 18.
The Chiefs just have to be smart here as they don’t want to fall into the trap that the Chargers had in September this year with Justin Herbert. He was a game-time decision for the Pittsburgh game with a bad ankle, and they played him anyway in that game even though they knew they had the Chiefs coming next week in a division game. Herbert aggravated his injury in Pittsburgh, left the game early in a loss, then he wasn’t moving as well against the Chiefs and lost that game too.
Imagine if the Chiefs lose these next two games with Mahomes at less than 100% mobility against great pass rushes that will be coming after his tackles. Then they’ll probably just blow off the Week 18 game in Denver to get their rest before having to play in the wild-card round and probably head back to Buffalo for a championship game, which wouldn’t be ideal.
Time will tell what the ultimate impact of this latest high-ankle sprain is for Mahomes. It could be the injury that killed their chance at the No. 1 seed and sunk the three-peat as they finally lost to the Bills in the playoffs. It could also be the latest legacy boost if he goes on a run and this team does make history with a three-peat.
All we know for sure is Mahomes won’t run a quarterback sneak, a play Brady was very fond of, the rest of the season.
Related Articles:
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