Patrick Mahomes was atrocious in Super Bowl LIX. It doesn’t take an advanced understanding of football to know that. For the bulk of the game Mahomes was either running for his life, making ill-advised throws, or simply so flustered that he couldn’t complete passes he’s done a thousand times before.
Patrick Mahomes was one of the worst Super Bowl QBs of all time, and the analytics prove it
Patrick Mahomes was the Eagles’ best player during his terrible Super Bowl performance.
Photo by Kevin Sabitus/Getty Images
James Dator has been covering a wide range of sports for SB Nation for over a decade, with a special focus on the NFL.
It wasn’t until garbage time that Mahomes did anything, and at that point the Eagles were already celebrating on the sideline and pouring their Gatorade. It served to make the box score appear a little closer than it was, when in reality Super Bowl LIX was one of the biggest beatdowns in the modern era
That’s all anecdotal evidence. The “eye test” of player evaluation. When we dive into the analytics of the game we see how Mahomes wasn’t just bad, he was historically bad.
The only player who was worse than Mahomes since 2000 was Rich Gannon in Super Bowl XXXVII, when he threw five interceptions (including three pick sixes) in the Raiders’ horrific 48-21 loss to the Buccaneers.
If we look at the last seven years of the Super Bowl and filter out garbage time performance here’s how the QB ranks in EPA per dropback.
- Patrick Mahomes (2022): 0.559
- Tom Brady (2020): 0.546
- Jalen Hurts (2024): 0.325
- Jalen Hurts (2022): 0.232
- Brock Purdy (2023): 0.191
- Patrick Mahomes (2019): 0.187
- Matthew Stafford (2021): 0.184
- Patrick Mahomes (2023): 0.157
- Jimmy Garoppolo (2019) 0.038
- Joe Burrow (2021): -0.141
- Tom Brady (2018): -0.002
- Patrick Mahomes (2020): -0.277
- Jared Goff (2018): -0.302
- Patrick Mahomes (2024): -1.248
Not only was Mahomes the worst QB of this timeframe, but he was over FOUR TIMES worse than the next worst QB. EPA measured expected points added, with negative ratings being quite rare for Super Bowl quarterbacks. Achieving over a -1.0 is damn-near unheard of — seriously.
Think of the worst quarterbacks you can in the past several years. Absolutely worthless players. None of them come remotely close to how bad Mahomes was in the Super Bowl.
Zach Wilson? -0.213
Deshaun Watson with the Browns? -0.175
Fundamentally costing your team over one point every play you’re on the field for is unheard of. Meanwhile, the performance was so bad that it pushed Mahomes’ overall standing over this era and turned him into a middling Super Bowl QB, which we know is ridiculous.
We can certainly appreciate the brilliance of Patrick Mahomes in totality, while also discussing how atrocious he was in Super Bowl LIX. Other factors were involved like a porous offensive line, and bad receiver separation — but it doesn’t change the fact that the single biggest reason the Chiefs lost to the Eagles was that Mahomes was ineffective under center, regardless of the reason why.
How he lives in infamy as having one of the worst Super Bowl games of all time by a quarterback.
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