Patrick Mahomes is the NFL’s most valuable player, which means he should be the NFL’s Most Valuable Player—straightforward logic that does not always apply to awards voting. The MVP is not just a vote held at the end of the season; it’s a discussion topic starting in September, for better or worse, and so it gets treated like a dramatic show instead of an honest assessment of players’ worths. Mahomes is the league’s best player. He is the most valuable to his team. That should really be all the discussion we need.
This was clear yet again Saturday, when the entire league took an ice bath and Mahomes, predictably, performed his usual individual medley of brilliance. He was the main reason the Chiefs built a 17–0 lead over the Seahawks before winning, 24–10. He is the main reason the Chiefs are now 12–3 and could play in their third Super Bowl in four years. Don’t punish him because he has done this before.
Mahomes sealed the win over the Seahawks with three daggers. He stepped up under pressure and fired a fastball into Travis Kelce’s hands for 20 yards. He hit an open Kelce again for 52 more. A few plays later, on third down, Mahomes scrambled right and dove for the end zone, on the kind of play that so often ends with you thinking the player has scored when in fact a knee or elbow made contact with the ground. But because Mahomes’s body control is not of this world, he somehow managed to rest all his weight on his left hand while his body was horizontal, allowing him to slap the pylon with the football for a touchdown. It was one of those Mahomes plays that really should make you think, “Good God, imagine if Peyton Manning ever even tried to do something like that,” but Mahomes is so casually brilliant that we just sort of shrug.
