After the amazing year by Mahomes, it made me wonder. Was this THE best ever season by any KC professional athlete in history?
Note, this covers the Chiefs and the Royals. One may want to raise Tom Watson in this and yes, he did win a pair of majors in both 1977 and 1982, but we're talking best individual season by a player on a professional sports team.
All due respect to DT's 20 sack season in 1990, Priest Holmes tremendous seasons in 2002 & 2003, Christian Okoye's NFL rushing best 1989 season, Joe Montans's memorable 1993 season or cripes, Larry Johnson's 2006 season, nobody had a better season than 2018 Patrick Mahomes. The crazy thing is if he stays healthy, he should have even better seasons than this year - heck, this season may not even rank in his Top 5 seasons when it's all said and done!
(I wasn't around for the Stram Era Chiefs but I don't think anyone had a season like 2018 Mahomes. Old timers feel free to chime in...)
So we go across the parking lot to the Royals. There was 2009 Zach Grienke. Not good enough. 1989 Bret Saberhagen, 1985 Bret Saberhagen? Good ones, but Mahomes was better. Maybe a 1987 Kevin Seitzer or a 1977 Al Cowens? Who are we kidding - it's not even close.
There's only ONE player who can really go toe to to toe with Mahomes and that's George Brett. Which season can compare to 2018 Mahomes? Well he did have awesome 1976, 1979, 1985 and 1990 seasons. Other than 1985, none of those other seasons could beat that. 1985 may have been Brett's best season overall, especially with it ending in a World Series Championship that he pretty much carried the Royals on his back to glory. His numbers were excellent but compare it to 2018 Mahomes and it falls short - not by much, but it does.
However, there was the 1980 Brett season - a season that was (like Mahomes this year) completely unreal.
A lot of you were not alive for that magical year and some of you may not even follow baseball that much, but let me tell you. It was off the charts amazing and the only thing comparable to 2018 Mahomes. Dare I say, it can be argued that 1980 Brett was even better than 2018 Mahomes.
Consider these numbers:
Brett finished at .390, leading the major leagues in average, on-base percentage (.454) and slugging percentage (.664). His 1.118 OPS was more than 100 points better than anyone else's that season.
And though he didn't hit .400 ...
• He hit .437 with 118 hits and six strikeouts in 270 at-bats against right-handed pitching.
• From May 30 to August 30 (a stretch that included a stint on the DL), Brett hit .470 (!) with 116 hits in 61 games (in which the Royals went 46-15). He hit .494 in the month of July.
• He hit .469 with 61 hits and five strikeouts with runners in scoring position.
• He hit .421 in the first five innings of games.
• He hit .425 with 22 RBIs in 10 games against the Yankees. That was foreshadowing for the postseason, when his three-run home run against Rich Gossage in Game 3 of the ALCS helped put the Royals into the World Series for the first ever time.
Those numbers are freaking ridiculous!
Mahomes by comparison had the 5,097 yards and 50 TD's passing (52 overall when you factor in the rushing TDs), Include the playoffs and he threw for 53 TD's and ran in 3 more.
The Chiefs offense scored 66 TD's in the regular season and 8 more in the playoffs for 74 TD's (that averages to more than 4 TD's PER GAME).
Twelve different Chiefs players caught at least 1 TD pass from Mahomes.
Mahomes only turned the ball over 16 times (12 picks, 4 fumbles) for the entire season including playoffs. That's 18 games, less than 1 a game.
Mahomes threw for at least 300 yards a total of 10 times this season. He had over 300 combined yards another 3 times. In the other 5 games, his lowest combined yardage total was 246 yards.
Both Brett and Mahomes led their teams to Divisional Championships.
Both Brett and Mahomes exorcised demons in the postseason (Brett finally overcoming the Yankees postseason jinx, Mahomes overcoming the Arrowhead playoff jinx and the Colts playoff jinx all in one).
Both Brett and Mahomes fell short in their quest to win a Championship but not by lack of trying (Brett batted .375 in the World Series and hit a HR in his very first home at bat, Mahomes put up 24 4th quarter points in the AFC Championship Game).
It makes for a fun argument, where there's really no right answer - just total dominance by what will be the two most popular professional athletes in Kansas City sports history?
If you had to choose one, who would you say had the best ever season?
The best, most analytical way to look at these seasons is to compare them to how much above league average they were in that season.
I think the best stat comparison is Wins Above Replacement in baseball compared to Approximate Value in football. These are both attempts to quantify overall value with their baseline league average performance that season.
Brett's 1980 season was worth 9.4 WAR, which isn't even the highest in Royals history. Best WAR season is Zack Greinke's 2009 at 10.4 WAR. It's also tied for 252nd best single season WAR in MLB history.
Mahomes' 2018 was 22. That's tied for 16th best AV in NFL history. The highest AV was LaDanian Tomlinson's 2006, at 26. Best AV for a QB is Tom Brady's 24 in 2007. However, Mahomes' season also wasn' the highest in Chiefs history. That belongs to Priest Holmes with a surprising 23 AV in 2002.
Seems clear that Mahomes should win this battle, especially when you consider that QB has such huge positional value over other positions that I doubt AV accurately captures it.
There are some caveats, however that should be addressed here. First, the rank vs. best seasons in each league history isn't exactly fair since baseball is much older than football. Since the top AV list for the NFL doesn't list a player earlier than 1960, I decided to limit the baseball WAR list to best seasons since 1960. Even then, Brett's 9.4 doesn't even make the top 40.
Brett's biggest problem is he missed approximately 1/4 the season. If we normalize for performance per game, we could project Brett's 1980 season would have been worth 12.5 WAR if he had maintained his performance for the full year.
That would have put Brett's 1980 as the second best season in MLB history since 1960 had he maintained his performance level over a full year. Here Brett's supporters win some points. The overall quality of Brett's 1980 performance probably does exceed Mahomes' 2018, but Mahomes had the better overall season because he didn't miss 1/4 the year.
Of course, limiting baseball to seasons since 1960 is a bit of problem. That excludes some of the biggest icons of the game. That's ignores the entire careers of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Cy Young, Joe DiMaggio, Satchel Paige, and Ted Williams just to name a few. Also, WAR and AV aren't intended to be precise. They're used to measure large differences between players, rather than to create a reliable "pecking order" of great seasons. [Reply]
Yes Dante wins some kind of award for most exciting. Tony G said after the return against Denver was the loudest he ever heard Arrowhead.
I feel like Tom Watson winning the British and US Open belongs up there.
Also I think Albert Lewis went a few whole seasons where no one threw near him and he blocked a couple of punts. But because CBs weren't famous back then unless they got interceptions, and there was no PFF to tell everyone how good he was, no one remembers or cares. He was so dominant though - the original Revis Island. [Reply]
Originally Posted by suzzer99:
Yes Dante wins some kind of award for most exciting. Tony G said after the return against Denver was the loudest he ever heard Arrowhead.
I feel like Tom Watson winning the British and US Open belongs up there.
Also I think Albert Lewis went a few whole seasons where no one threw near him and he blocked a couple of punts. But because CBs weren't famous back then unless they got interceptions, and there was no PFF to tell everyone how good he was, no one remembers or cares. He was so dominant though - the original Revis Island.
Otis Taylor has 1,297 receiving yards in a 14-game season. That equates to 1,482 yards today, which would barely beat Tyreek's 2018 season for the best Chiefs receiving season ever. And he did it in the era of bump and run where the offensive linemen couldn't hold. He averaged 22.4 yards per catch. [Reply]
Originally Posted by suzzer99:
Yes Dante wins some kind of award for most exciting. Tony G said after the return against Denver was the loudest he ever heard Arrowhead.
I feel like Tom Watson winning the British and US Open belongs up there.
Also I think Albert Lewis went a few whole seasons where no one threw near him and he blocked a couple of punts. But because CBs weren't famous back then unless they got interceptions, and there was no PFF to tell everyone how good he was, no one remembers or cares. He was so dominant though - the original Revis Island.
I was at that game, right there in that corner in sec 123 iirc. It was LOOOUD.
I just remember being like ahhhh shit when he was running backwards...then a couple block in the back no calls and he looped around turned the corner and the place erupted as there was no one in front of him but Gary Stills. [Reply]
Originally Posted by In58men:
Me being an outsider always felt like it was more of a Chiefs town :-)
Only in recent memory. Royals ruled KC in the 80's. Of course the Chiefs were experiencing a pretty down period then.
Brett's season is more impressive when you think about it seriously. Mahomes benefits from having 3 All Pro level players catching his passes for most of last season, and those guys turned short gains into long ones, and generally made his life easier than it would have been. See the changes in productivity after the woman kicker got the boot.
Mahomes also plays in an NFL geared towards making offense the show piece with rules designed to hamstring defenses.
His season is among the most impressive things I've ever seen from a QB, let alone a 2nd year QB in his first year starting. Let's not overvalue it when placing it in history. I look forward to having the privilege of watching a phenom play QB in the NFL over the next hopefully 15+ years, even if it is for KC. I want to say that again, ALL football fans are privileged to be able to watch Mahomes play. I think Mahomes will eclipse this last years performance and it will be just a footnote in a magnificent career. [Reply]
Wow - I'd like to say Mahomes......but the NFL today is not what it was 20 years ago (or even 10).
I think the numbers Mahomes put up this past year will be fairly reachable every year (and probably 5-6 QBs out there that could do it too).
Brett was at .400 on September 19th. Since 1941, there has only been Gwynn and Brett at 390 or above.
And while I love Mahomes and everything so far.........but until he gets us to the super bowl, NOTHING will match this KC Sports moment (for me at least):
Originally Posted by DJJasonp:
Wow - I'd like to say Mahomes......but the NFL today is not what it was 20 years ago (or even 10).
I think the numbers Mahomes put up this past year will be fairly reachable every year (and probably 5-6 QBs out there that could do it too).
Brett was at .400 on September 19th. Since 1941, there has only been Gwynn and Brett at 390 or above.
And while I love Mahomes and everything so far.........but until he gets us to the super bowl, NOTHING will match this KC Sports moment (for me at least):
Winning in 1985 and 2015 easily tops anything from 1980 [Reply]
