4 reasons to be excited about Patrick Mahomes’ record-breaking start

Trading Alex Smith after he had a career-best and league-leading 104.7 passer rating in 2017 was a bold move. The Kansas City Chiefs were banking on the fact that first-round pick Patrick Mahomes would be ready to take the reins in his second NFL season and lead the team to bigger and better things than Smith.

So far, the risk looks brilliant.

Two games into the Mahomes era, the quarterback has 10 touchdowns with no interceptions. It’s the most any passer has ever had through the first two weeks of a season. His six touchdowns against the Pittsburgh Steelers in Week 2 tied a Chiefs single-game record.

The Chiefs are 2-0 now, and Mahomes is the most exciting NFL player to watch. Here are four reasons why you better tune in when Mahomes is on television:

Drew Brees, Peyton Manning, and Charley Johnson all had seasons with nine touchdowns in the first two weeks. That was the record until Mahomes came along, but only Manning did it without an interception.

In 2013, Manning started his year with seven touchdowns and no interceptions in Week 1 and two touchdowns without a pick in Week 2.

While Mahomes didn’t quite make it to seven touchdowns Sunday, his back-to-back games with at least four touchdowns show this wasn’t a one-week explosion. It also ties another record. It’s the 16th time a quarterback has had at least four touchdowns and no interceptions in consecutive games. No passer has ever made it to three games in a row.

It’ll be up to the San Francisco 49ers to figure out a way to slow him down in Week 3.

On Monday, Mahomes turns 23.

While he did get one start in 2017 when the Chiefs already locked up a playoff spot and opted to rest its starters in Week 17, this is essentially his first NFL action.

The previous record for touchdown passes through a player’s first three career games belonged to Marcus Mariota and Mark Rypien, who each had eight. Mahomes broke that record too, despite the fact that he had no touchdowns in his first career start last year. The record through two games is Mariota’s with six.

It’s obviously unrealistic to expect Mahomes to average five touchdowns per game for much longer, but there’s no reason to think he’s not going to set the league on fire for a very long time.

When the Chiefs took the Texas Tech quarterback, his ridiculous arm was already the talk of legends. At his pro day, he casually uncorked an 80-yard bomb to the end zone to finish his throwing display in front of coaches and scouts.

His longest touchdown of the day against the Steelers was a 29-yard pass to Tyreek Hill that didn’t show off all of his arm strength.

But his huge arm is evident even in his intermediate passes. Like his 19-yard touchdown to Travis Kelce early in the game that was lasered in before the Steelers defense knew what hit them.

And this rope down the middle of the field.

We still haven’t seen Mahomes launch one 80 yards. At least not in a regular season game. He already showed us what he can do in preseason.

Good luck scheming up a defense to stop that when the Chiefs have deep threats like Hill and Sammy Watkins.

Kansas City’s defense is pretty rough. It gave up more than 500 yards of total offense to the Chargers in Week 1 and allowed 37 points to the Steelers in Week 2.

The only reason the Chiefs are 2-0 is because the offense is winning shootouts, Texas Tech-style.

Don’t expect Mahomes’ numbers to slow down, because the Chiefs can’t afford them to. They’re going to need him to keep firing and gunslinging on a weekly basis to prop up a defense that isn’t getting the job done.

The return of Eric Berry from a heel injury will eventually help, but it’s the Mahomes show in Kansas City and it’s a blast.