Texas Tech’s QB put up more yards than any player ever has, then said he could have played better

Patrick Mahomes is probably the best QB in the Big 12. He’s certainly the most electric. Saturday night, his Texas Tech squad, along with its opponent Oklahoma, made a mockery of any modern tenet about defense in a 66-59 game of basketball on grass. Seriously, look at this mockery of defenses everywhere.

Afterward, Mahomes said this to ESPN:

“Definitely could’ve done better. A lot of throws I underthrew, overthrew. ... it wasn’t good enough.”

Mahomes threw **88** passes and along with his 12 rushes, accounted for 100 plays. All by himself. For perspective, Houston is No. 2 in the country in total plays ran with 671. They haven’t run 100 plays in a single game all season.

I’d imagine that Mahomes, like any great athlete, is extremely nitpicky about his performances and overly critical about the things that he does or doesn’t do on the football field. His peer, Louisville’s Lamar Jackson, gave himself a D grade in a game in which he scored five touchdowns and the Cardinals scored over 60 points.

But in the interest of being nitpicky, detractors may look at Mahomes’ box score and pick something out.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Mahomes “only” had 52 completions. That gives him a 59.1 percent completion rating for his troubles. His QB rating was only 145.6, making it his second-worst game of the season by that metric. So by his standards, certainly he could have played better. Most sane people would understand that he’s doing all this on a recently surgically repaired right shoulder and cut the guy a break because his defense refused to do him any favors.

I’d also argue there’s a law of diminishing returns situation at play here, but that’s what happens when you nearly throw 100 times, especially when those throws are down the field and not of the dink-and-dunk screen pass variety all the time. Ease up on yourself, Patrick. You did all you could.