Patrick Mahomes Threatens Opening Day Records

NFL Week 1 - To nobody's surprise, Patrick Mahomes was our top-ranked quarterback of Week 1. In fact, he had one of the best Week 1 performances we have ever measured. What does that tell us about his future? Do quarterbacks who play well in the season opener typically maintain that level throughout the year, or is it really, as the saying goes, Just One Game?

Mahomes threw 39 passes in Kansas City's 44-21 win against Arizona, completing 30 of them for 360 yards and five touchdowns without giving up a sack or interception. In nine drives Mahomes played before giving way to Chad Henne, the Chiefs scored six touchdowns and a field goal with one punt and one lost fumble (which came at the end of Mahomes' 19-yard completion). That's good for 302 passing DYAR, though Mahomes' total drops a bit if you include rushing data due to a fumbled snap. Justin Herbert was a distant second this week with 163 passing DYAR; nobody else had even half of Mahomes' total.

Our list of the best quarterback games by DYAR now goes back to 1981 and includes exactly 20 players before Mahomes who put up at least 220 combined DYAR in Week 1. None of them matched Mahomes' DYAR total—Phil Simms was the closest with 300 combined DYAR, throwing for 409 yards and four touchdowns for the Giants against the Eagles in 1984—but we can't say for certain that Mahomes has set the record there because we don't have full-season opponent adjustments for Arizona yet. We don't know for sure just how bad the Cardinals pass defense is right now—they might give up five touchdown passes again when face the Raiders next week, or maybe Derek Carr will throw three picks for the second week in a row. Those final adjustments could lower or raise Mahomes' DYAR when all is said and done.

What we can do, since we don't have opponent adjustments for Mahomes, is remove them from everyone else as well. If we take that list of great opening day games and rank them using YAR instead of DYAR, Simms falls from first place in the rankings to fourth. The new leader is Dak Prescott, whose raw totals (405 yards, four touchdowns) against the Giants in 2019 were similar to those of Simms against the Eagles. While the Eagles were a middle-of-the-pack defense in 1984, however, the 2019 Giants sucked, and so Prescott falls to seventh in DYAR.

Put it all together and Prescott still holds the Week 1 record for combined YAR, though Mahomes has set a new standard for passing YAR.

It turns out that Week 1 dominance is usually not a fluke, but the start of an excellent season instead. The 19 players who qualified for this table before Mahomes and finished that year with enough attempts to qualify for our end-of-season quarterback tables had a median ranking of seventh in passing DYAR and sixth in DVOA. Five of them finished first in one stat or the other, and 13 made the top 10 in both. But what about the others? Here's a look at the seven players who finished outside the top 10 in DYAR, DVOA, or both after a brilliant performance in Week 1:

Ron Jaworski, PHI, 1982: We added data for 1981 and 1982 this offseason, which means this is the earliest season ever discussed in Quick Reads. At 31 years old, Jaworski was at the peak of his career, having quarterbacked the Eagles to four straight playoff berths, including an appearance in Super Bowl XV against the Oakland Raiders. He started the season on fire—in his first two games, he completed 65.8% of his passes for 8.9 yards per throw with four touchdowns, one interception, and seven sacks. Then came the strike and the league shut down. When games started again in November, Jaworski wasn't the same—his completion percentage plummeted to 55.6% after the shutdown, averaging 6.6 yards per throw with only eight touchdowns, 11 interceptions, and 24 sacks. That total of 31 sacks taken was the most in the NFL that year, the second time Jaworski had finished first in that dubious category, and he would wear that crown of thorns a third time the next season in 1983. But for all those sacks, Jaworski was durable, playing in Philadelphia until 1986 (when the Eagles took the joy of sacks to unimaginable peaks) before spending two years as a backup in Miami and Kansas City.

Troy Aikman, DAL, 1997: Aikman at this time was in some ways an enhanced version of Jaworski: 31 years old, Super Bowl experience, coming off six straight Pro Bowls. He threw four touchdowns against the Steelers to open the 1997 season, but had only 15 touchdowns (while giving up a dozen interceptions) the rest of the way. The Cowboys stuttered to a 6-5 start before losing each of their last five games to finish 6-10 and out of the playoffs for the first time since 1990; the franchise would not win another playoff game until 2009. Aikman never returned to the Pro Bowl. He started for three more years in Dallas but missed 12 games in that span before retiring due to concussions.

Brian Griese, DEN, 2001: Griese was a third-round pick in 1998, John Elway's last year in the league. He took over as the Broncos starter after Elway retired and made the Pro Bowl in 2000, leading the NFL in interception rate and passer rating and making the top five in both DYAR and DVOA. He looked even better early in 2001; in the first two weeks of the year, he threw six touchdowns without an interception while giving up only one sack. Then he went into a slump, and over the next six games he threw more interceptions (12) than touchdowns (nine) while giving up 20 sacks. He righted the ship somewhat in the second half of the year, but never again looked like the 2000 version of himself. Still, he lasted several more years as a starter in Miami, Tampa Bay, and Chicago, leading the NFL with a 69.3% completion rate with the Bucs in 2004.

Tommy Maddox, PIT, 2003: We could write a book about the twists and turns in Maddox's unique career, but we will try to keep this brief. Maddox was only 20 years old when the Broncos drafted him out of UCLA in 1992, and he is still the youngest player to throw a pass in an official NFL game since the 1940s. Maddox only lasted two years in Denver (losing all four of his starts) before being traded to the Rams. He spent two years with the Rams and Giants without ever starting and failed to make the Falcons roster out of training camp in 1997, then spent two years out of football, selling insurance. He began his gridiron comeback with the New Jersey Red Dogs of the Arena League in 2000 and continued it with the Los Angeles Xtreme of the original XFL, where he was named MVP after leading the league in yards and touchdowns. He signed with the Steelers in the fall of 2001 to back up Kordell Stewart, then took over as starter when Stewart was benched in Week 4 of 2002, leading the Steelers to a wild-card victory over the Browns in the Maddox-Kelly Holcomb playoff shootout that we swear to you actually happened. He opened 2003 with the best game of his career (21-of-29, 260 yards, three touchdowns, no interceptions against the Ravens) and went on to start all 16 games, but played most of them like … well, like an insurance salesman. He was still Pittsburgh's starter on opening day of 2004 but lasted only two games before giving way to a rookie named Ben Roethlisberger. In his final NFL game, he took a half-dozen sacks in a 16-13 loss to Baltimore in November of 2005, but the Steelers would win him a Super Bowl ring a few months later.

Sam Bradford, MIN, 2017: The top overall draft pick in 2010, Bradford lasted only five years in St. Louis before tearing his left ACL twice, missing the entire 2014 season. The next year he was traded to Philadelphia for Nick Foles in virtually a one-for-one swap, with only a handful of late draft picks involved. He did not make the top 20 in either DYAR or DVOA, but the Eagles signed him to a two-year extension in March of 2016 … and then traded up in the draft to select Carson Wentz second overall. When Teddy Bridgewater tore his ACL in training camp, the Vikings traded for Bradford. He was the king of the checkdown that year, finishing first in completion percentage but last in yards per completion. He opened 2017 by ripping up the Saints for 346 yards and three touchdowns, but accumulated injuries limited him to only one more game the rest of the year. The Cardinals guaranteed him $15 million in March of 2018, then gave him three starts before benching him for Josh Rosen and releasing him in November. He is a charter member of the Business of Football Hall of Fame, having earned nearly $130 million in his career without ever reaching the playoffs.

Ryan Fitzpatrick, TB, 2018: After starting games for the (deep inhale) Rams, Bengals, Bills, Titans, Texans, and Jets, Fitzpatrick joined the Buccaneers to back up Jameis Winston in 2017, making a handful of forgettable starts that year. With Winston suspended to start 2018, Fitzpatrick caught fire—in three games, he completed more than 70% of his passes for an 11.1-yard average with 11 touchdowns. Winston's suspension ended in Week 4, but Dirk Koetter kept him on the bench behind Fitzpatrick … for two quarters. Fitzpatrick was benched after a 9-of-18, 126-yard, 1-interception performance left the Bucs down 38-3 at halftime against Chicago. In Week 8, against Cincinnati, Winston was benched for after giving up four interceptions and five sacks. Fitzpatrick came into the game down 34-16 but threw a pair of touchdowns to tie the score before the Bengals won with a field goal at the gun. Fitzpatrick started the next three games, but his FitzMagic had dried up—he threw four touchdowns with seven interceptions and six sacks in three straight losses before being benched for good. He finished his career in Miami and then Washington before announcing his retirement a few months ago. Looking back at this, and all the Buccaneers have achieved since then, one gets the impression that Koetter had no idea what he was doing. And speaking of the Bucs…

Tom Brady, NE, 2019: You don't need me to tell you Brady's story. As has often been the case (his name appears five times in our Week 1 table), he got off to a great start in 2019. He continued to shine for several weeks, but he slumped badly after Halloween. In his first eight games, he completed 64.7% of his passes with a 7.3-yard average; in his last eight games, those numbers dropped to 56.9% and 5.9. Brady and New England suffered a 20-13 defeat to the Titans in Foxborough in the playoffs, and the Patriots decided to cut ties with their aging quarterback. Brady quietly relocated to Florida, and he has not been seen or heard from since.

So what does any of this have to do with Mahomes? Honestly, not a lot. He's still only 27, not an aging legend like Jaworski, Aikman, or Brady. He's not a journeyman like Fitzpatrick or Bradford, or an untested youngster like Griese or Maddox. He's a superstar who produces games like this so regularly we take them for granted sometimes, and he'll probably have several more whether it's Week 1 or Week 18.

Because what you really needed on a Tuesday morning is 2,000 words telling you that Patrick Mahomes is probably going to have a great year.