O’Brien was hoping to get him at #12. He would have dodged that with Reid or Payton.
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The ESPN, NFL network guys didn't get Mahomes. They were taught to look for consistent mechanics. Mahomes threw the ball differently every time and could throw from multiple arm slots.

Instead, they valued the robotic Josh Rosen who has perfect looking mechanics in a clean pocket. He would be the perfect QB for a flag football league. Mahomes was perfect for the actual NFL where you have athletic 300 lb guys trying to kill you.
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Mahomes would do very well in flag football as well. He’s a big time natural playmaker.
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That didn’t age well.
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Yea. I remember he was all the rage leading up to the draft. But I never saw the play making ability like I saw in the Mahomes highlights.

I guess a lot of the Mahomes downgrades we’re Texas Tech/Air raid negativity
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Jared Goff went #1 the year before and he played in Air Raid. But Mahomes went to Tech..the school where Mike Leach had once coached. If Mahomes had been at Cal he probably goes top 3.

Tech just was too much for the 80 year old scouts looking for the next West Coast QB.
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The air raid thing, and the myth that Mahomes was some raw and reckless gunslinger who was going to turn the ball over a lot.
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Goff sucked his rookie year (2016) with Jeff Fisher. At the time Mahomes was drafted in spring 2017, many people likely believed Goff was on his way to being a bust. Goff’s early struggles did not help Mahomes or anyone else coming from Air Raid system.
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I think everyone looked at Mahomes helmet too much as well as the conference. Remember lots of folks saying Graham Harrell looked great in that offense and the Big 12 had bust after bust after bust after bust bc there was no defense or a pro style offense.

There wasn’t really anyone to compare Patrick to except Brett Favre, who is the all-time leader in interceptions. They saw his style of play and thought it was way too risky. I mean how many QB’s were like Patrick but successful? We just got through the Favre and Johnny football era with both of those polarizing players making disastrous mistakes extending plays. Of course GM’s and scouts were risk averse...there was no successful prototype of Patrick like the classic pocket QB’s that were the best in history.

I don’t care about any of that though. I get that your job is on the line as a GM and you likely get 1 shot to draft a QB, but I still can’t believe teams weren’t all over Patrick after the LSU game. I’ve never seen a QB in that bad of a position perform so incredibly well. The Baker game was the attention getter, but that LSU game should have been eye-opener that made teams want this guy at any cost.
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Perhaps he was more valued by coaches who could see a great quarterback even if he didn't fit the traditional mold.
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I think these are great points. We think about football as a team thing, but the people making the decisions value their jobs first and foremost. Most of them will take a lower ceiling for a candidate if it means less risk for their job. Simultaneously, they're inclined to not roll the dice on a player with a high upside if he's not "a safe choice", because a failure there makes them look twice as bad because "everyone saw that it was a risky choice".

Interestingly, I see exactly the same thing in my work as a consultant. I'll often see clients pick a company that's completely mediocre, and everyone knows they're mediocre, but it's a choice that's easy to defend. That mediocre company usually has a long resume and it's easy to point at it and say, "Hey, look at that experience. It was logical for me to pick them." So you end up with some mediocre firm winning project after project in a particular field for no reason other than that they've won project after project.
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I think he was more valued by coaches that 1) recognized that NFL offenses are changing and 2) wanted to be ahead of that curve.

That's why you saw guys like Sean Payton targeting him.
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There was Aaron Rodgers. Where a lot of people blew it with Mahomes is they seriously underestimated his leadership ability, intelligence, and work ethic.
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I also had no idea Mahomes would be so good either, but he was an unknown to me. I live in NC so I saw some of Trubisky's games.
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I know that I wanted Mahomes in the 2017 draft and I was excited when he got drafted in KC. But, I have to give credit to the draftubators here for that. I read the evaluations of their picks every year. Geno Smith, Derek Carr, Deshaun Watson, and plenty more. But they had me sold on Mahomes more than any other,
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