What if the Chiefs never drafted Patrick Mahomes?.
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Patrick Mahomes would be having a completely different career had he not been drafted by the Kansas City Chiefs in 2017.
The Kansas City Chiefs made the greatest decision for the franchise in 2017 when they drafted quarterback Patrick Mahomes.
The team has since won three Super Bowls and made the big game four times.
This year, they are on track to create history as the team is inching closer to a three-peat.
The quarterback has been the reason for their success but what if Kansas City had never drafted the Texas Tech alum in the 2017 draft?
The Chiefs finished the 2016-17 season with a 12-4 record, it was a successful year as they won the AFC West but went on to lose in the Divisional Round to the Pittsburgh Steelers.
The franchise understood that it needed to think ahead and draft a new quarterback in the draft that year so that the rookie could get an opportunity to back up then-aging veteran Alex Smith.
The Kansas City Chiefs had the 27th overall pick in the 2017 draft but they knew at that position, it would be hard to draft a good quarterback as the players they desire would be long gone.
This is why they wound up moving up to the 10th overall pick by giving the 27th overall pick, a third-round pick, and their 2018 first-round pick to the Buffalo Bills.
At the time, little did Buffalo know they would be signing their death warrant by executing this swap as Patrick Mahomes would come back to haunt them in the future.
Patrick Mahomes was originally supposed to be drafted by the Bears.
Heading into the draft, the Chicago Bears, New Orleans Saints.
and Houston Texans were teams that were expected to draft a quarterback.
The Bears had expressed interest in drafting the Texas Tech quarterback. Pat Mahomes Sr.
and the quarterback have since revealed in podcasts that the Bears had promised to draft him with their 3rd overall pick.
However, Chicago could not catch a break and the franchise chose Mitchell Trubisky over Mahomes.
which at the time did not seem to be a disastrous decision considering the former was deemed to be better in football IQ, reading defenses, footwork, and pass accuracy.
The other 8 teams apart from the Bears and the Chiefs were content with their quarterbacks and therefore, Mahomes was not on their board.
Assuming the Bears had picked Patrick Mahomes, how would his career have turned out.
As the team’s recent track record shows, Chicago is the last place a talented quarterback would wish to be drafted into.
The team finished 3-13 with John Fox as the Head Coach.
The Bears’ offense had potential with Alshon Jeffery and Kevin White at wide receiver and Zach Miller at tight end but their quarterback was Jay Cutler.
Would Mahomes have been able to turn things around for them instantaneously? Yes.
Patrick Mahomes would bring in a renewed sense of energy for the Bears.
He would have elevated their offense and made them better than they were the previous year.
Now does that mean he would have led them to the playoffs? No, Chicago would have won 5-6 more games with him.
but John Fox was still the HC and his 14-34 record with the team makes it clear that it would have been hard for a rookie quarterback to play at his best with him calling the shots.
However, with Matt Nagy things could have panned out differently.
After Fox was fired in 2017, Matt Nagy took over and in his first year, Mitchell Trubisky and the Bears won the division and made the playoffs.
If Patrick Mahomes were to be in Trubisky’s place, then the Philadelphia Eagles would have suffered defeat in their quest to win a second Super Bowl title in 2018-19.
The Bears played the Nick Foles-led Philadelphia Eagles in the first round of the playoffs and lost by 1 point. 9 out of the 15 total points that Chicago scored came from field goals.
So far, Mahomes has shown that he steps up big in the post-season.
and with him at QB, Chicago would have been able to put up 21 at the least on the board.
If the Bears had won that game, they would face the Drew Brees-led Saints.
This would have been a tough matchup, one that Mahomes and the Bears would not have won because the Saints’ defense was one of the best.
At the most, the quarterback would have taken the team to the Divisional Round.
Patrick Mahomes on the Chicago Bears would not have won any Super Bowls.
Despite the impact he would have had early on, the franchise has had other struggles beyond just a quarterback.
However, if he had the roster that Caleb Williams currently has around him, then it might have been a different story.
Patrick Mahomes on the Saints would have been the best-case alternative apart from the Chiefs.
The New Orleans Saints were a team that had vowed to take Mahomes if he was still available at number 11.
HC Sean Payton had expressed interest in Mahomes in the lead-up to the draft.
The quarterback revealed the story of how he told the Chiefs that if they were to let him fall to pick number 11 then he would no longer be available, on an episode of New Heights Show.
Realistically, this would not have turned out too shabby for the quarterback.
If Patrick Mahomes was drafted by the Saints then he would not have played for a year or two.
His first two seasons would have been spent backing up and learning from Drew Brees, one of the best quarterbacks to play the game.
His presence on the Saints roster would have moved up Brees’ retirement timeline from 2020 to 2019.
From 2020 onwards, Mahomes would start and he would have kept the team’s playoff streak ongoing.
Would he have won a Super Bowl with them? Highly unlikely but he would have a good career.
How would Patrick Mahomes’ absence from the Chiefs impact the NFL?
If the Kansas City Chiefs’ quarterback had found himself on a different team, then the NFL would be looking a lot different.
Travis Kelce would not be in the GOAT debate of tight ends, Tony Gonzalez would still hold the record as the greatest Chiefs tight end of all time, and presumably, Kelce would be on a different team.
Alex Smith would have gone on to finish his career in Arrowhead Stadium or KC would have traded him and opted to draft a quarterback in 2019.
However, the team would not have had much luck since there were not many great options at the position apart from Kyler Murray who was the first overall pick.
In many ways, Travis Kelce owes a lot of his success to Patrick Mahomes.
For fans of the Chiefs, it would be a grim scenario.
The contracts of quarterbacks in the NFL would be structured differently as well.
Since Mahomes signed his massive deal for a decade with the Chiefs, the QB market became drastically expensive with mediocre players receiving $50+ million per year.
If the Chiefs were never a dynasty then that would mean some other team could have reaped the benefit of their absence.
Rather than witnessing the Chiefs-49ers duels, the NFL would be treated to an annual showdown between the Bills and the 49ers in the Super Bowl.
Josh Allen and Brock Purdy would have at least one Lombardi Trophy in their showcase if this scenario had played out.
Fortunately for Patrick Mahomes, he landed up in the perfect spot for himself.
His career would not have been better with any other franchise apart from the Chiefs.
It is remarkable to think that one right decision by a team that had not drafted a quarterback in the first round since the 1990s turned their fortunes around and made them into an NFL powerhouse.
