Patrick Mahomes exploded into America’s football consciousness in 2018, not just with over 5000 passing yards and 50+ TD throws, but with left-handed tosses, no-look passes, Tarkenton-like scrambles culminating in passes for scores, side-arm flicks, a pre-season bomb almost 70 yards in the air, etc. etc. Given his amazing stats, and relatively low draft position, if you had him on a fantasy roster, you had a good chance of winning your league: I won three leagues where I owned him and was 0-for-2 when I didn’t.
So what can we expect from Mahomes in 2019?
One way to estimate is to look at previous 5000 and 50 seasons and see what those QBs did the next season. Except only one other QB has matched both of those totals – Peyton Manning in 2013 (5477 and 55). It’s hard to make a meaningful estimate from a sample of one.
Further complicating this method is that the only other QB with 50 TD passes in a season, Tom Brady in 2007, didn’t throw for a single TD the next year, going down for the season with a knee injury just 76 passing yards into the 2008 season.
The 5000-passing-yards club is bigger than the Manning-Brady-Mahomes 50-TD circle: 11 times QBs have reached that yardage milestone. Besides Mahomes and Manning, Brady did it too, but in 2011 not 2007, so he didn’t get the 5000-50 double. Ben Roethlisberger (under the Mahomes radar in 2018) and Matthew Stafford (2011) also had 5000-yard seasons, but the undisputed champion in this category is Drew Brees. Brees owns almost half of the 5000-yard milestones (2008, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2016), a remarkable feat, maybe only rivalled by Dan Marino’s 1984 year, the sole 5000-yard season before 2008.
Nine times QBs have fallen just short of 5000 passing yards – Brees (2014), Kirk Cousins (2016), Eli Manning (2011), Roethlisberger (2014), Tony Romo (2012), Matt Ryan (2016 and 2018), and Stafford (2012) all topped 4800 yards. So did Marino in 1984 and Dan Fouts in 1981.
Coming close to 50 passing TDs was rarer than nearing the 5000-yard mark. Only Peyton in 2004 managed 49. Next most was Marino with 48 (1984). If I look at 40+ TD years, I get 13 total. Besides the five already mentioned, there are also Marino again (44, 1986), Aaron Rodgers twice (45 in 2011 and 40 in 2016), Brees twice (46 in 2011 and 43 in 2012), Andrew Luck (40 in 2014), Stafford (41 in 2011), and Kurt Warner back in 1999 (41).
Two things jump out from reciting all these stats: 5000 and/or 50 are mostly a recent phenomena, starting in 2007 except for Marino’s 1984; and 2011 was quite a year for QBs. For that matter, 2018 wasn’t bad either with Mahomes, Roethlisberger, and Ryan all posting big numbers.
Circling back to the question at hand, how did these QBs perform in the next season?
I decided to draw my comparables from QBs with either 300+ passing yards per game (4800 for a full season) or 2.5 TD/game (40+ over a full year). That left me with 46 QB-seasons. Some of them were from the last century, including the Fouts and Marino peak seasons in the ’80s, Johnny Unitas in 1959, George Blanda (1961), Y.A. Tittle (1963), and Sid Luckman (1943). I decided to eliminate everything before the last strike in 1988 so I was only looking at potential 16-game seasons. I also threw out Jake Delhomme’s 2007 (he played only 3 games), Koy Detmer’s 1999 (1 game: 10/29/181 but 3 TD passes), and Todd Marinovich’s 1991 (1 game, 23/40/243, 3 TDs). Tom Brady’s 2007 got dropped since he only played a part of one game in 2008. And of course, the 2018 performances of Mahomes, Roethlisberger, and Ryan don’t make the cut since we don’t know what they will do in 2019.
That left 28 comparable seasons. The full list is at the end of the article. But using those comps, I came up with the following estimates of what we can expect from Mahomes in 2019:
|
Estimated 2019 Passing Stats for Patrick Mahomes |
||
|
Estimate |
Yards |
TDs |
|
Minimum |
4626 |
34 |
|
Average |
4726 |
36 |
|
Maximum |
4866 |
38 |
The averages are based on four different estimates each for passing yards and passing touchdowns. The minimum and maximum reflect the low and high estimates, respectively, for each stat. Generally, the comparable QBs declined a bit in their next season. They put up numbers equivalent to Matt Ryan’s 2018 season: excellent, but not what Mahomes gave us in 2018.
(If you want the methodology of how I came up with those estimates, see the discussion after the list of comparable QBs.)
History is not destiny. Mahomes could be a unique player who hasn’t hit his peak yet. It’s possible that he’ll be the first 6000/60 man – or at least first back-to-back 5000/50 QB. But if the Chiefs’ defense is better, the offense may not have to keep the pedal to the metal so much. If Tyreek Hill or Travis Kelce gets hurt, the passing offense may be less productive. If the offensive line declines, the offense could be less efficient. A lot of things came together for Mahomes in 2018, as they did for the comparable QBs studied here, and those factors rarely repeat. History, or regression if you prefer, is not destiny, but it’s a heavy weight.
Comparables
|
Player |
Year |
GP |
Pass YD |
Pass TD |
Yd/G |
TD/G |
GP Next Year |
Pass Yd Next Year |
Pass TD Next Year |
Category |
|
Drew Brees |
2011 |
16 |
5476 |
46 |
342 |
2.9 |
16 |
5177 |
43 |
Both |
|
Drew Brees |
2012 |
16 |
5177 |
43 |
324 |
2.7 |
16 |
5162 |
39 |
Both |
|
Peyton Manning |
2013 |
16 |
5477 |
55 |
342 |
3.4 |
16 |
4727 |
39 |
Both |
|
Aaron Rodgers |
2011 |
15 |
4643 |
45 |
310 |
3.0 |
16 |
4295 |
39 |
Both |
|
Matthew Stafford |
2011 |
16 |
5038 |
41 |
315 |
2.6 |
16 |
4967 |
20 |
Both |
|
Tom Brady |
2011 |
16 |
5235 |
39 |
327 |
2.4 |
16 |
4827 |
34 |
Yards |
|
Tom Brady |
2012 |
16 |
4827 |
34 |
302 |
2.1 |
16 |
4343 |
25 |
Yards |
|
Drew Brees |
2008 |
16 |
5069 |
34 |
317 |
2.1 |
15 |
4388 |
34 |
Yards |
|
Drew Brees |
2013 |
16 |
5162 |
39 |
323 |
2.4 |
16 |
4952 |
33 |
Yards |
|
Drew Brees |
2014 |
16 |
4952 |
33 |
310 |
2.1 |
15 |
4870 |
32 |
Yards |
|
Drew Brees |
2015 |
15 |
4870 |
32 |
325 |
2.1 |
16 |
5208 |
37 |
Yards |
|
Drew Brees |
2016 |
16 |
5208 |
37 |
326 |
2.3 |
16 |
4334 |
23 |
Yards |
|
Kirk Cousins |
2016 |
16 |
4917 |
25 |
307 |
1.6 |
16 |
4093 |
27 |
Yards |
|
Eli Manning |
2011 |
16 |
4933 |
29 |
308 |
1.8 |
16 |
3948 |
26 |
Yards |
|
Warren Moon |
1990 |
15 |
4689 |
33 |
313 |
2.2 |
16 |
4690 |
23 |
Yards |
|
Ben Roethlisberger |
2014 |
16 |
4952 |
32 |
310 |
2.0 |
12 |
3938 |
21 |
Yards |
|
Ben Roethlisberger |
2015 |
12 |
3938 |
21 |
328 |
1.8 |
14 |
3819 |
29 |
Yards |
|
Tony Romo |
2012 |
16 |
4903 |
28 |
306 |
1.8 |
15 |
3828 |
31 |
Yards |
|
Matt Ryan |
2016 |
16 |
4944 |
38 |
309 |
2.4 |
16 |
4095 |
20 |
Yards |
|
Matthew Stafford |
2012 |
16 |
4967 |
20 |
310 |
1.3 |
16 |
4650 |
29 |
Yards |
|
Kurt Warner |
2000 |
11 |
3429 |
21 |
312 |
1.9 |
16 |
4830 |
36 |
Yards |
|
Kurt Warner |
2001 |
16 |
4830 |
36 |
302 |
2.3 |
7 |
1431 |
3 |
Yards |
|
Andrew Luck |
2014 |
16 |
4761 |
40 |
298 |
2.5 |
7 |
1881 |
15 |
TDs |
|
Peyton Manning |
2004 |
16 |
4557 |
49 |
285 |
3.1 |
16 |
3747 |
28 |
TDs |
|
Aaron Rodgers |
2016 |
16 |
4428 |
40 |
277 |
2.5 |
7 |
1675 |
16 |
TDs |
|
Kurt Warner |
1999 |
16 |
4353 |
41 |
272 |
2.6 |
11 |
3429 |
21 |
TDs |
|
Deshaun Watson |
2017 |
7 |
1699 |
19 |
243 |
2.7 |
16 |
4165 |
26 |
TDs |
|
Carson Wentz |
2017 |
13 |
3296 |
33 |
254 |
2.5 |
11 |
3074 |
21 |
TDs |
The QBs are sorted by category, the alphabetically by last name within categories. It’s possible that players who got injured in the next season, like Kurt Warner in 2001-2002, pull down the averages drag down the estimates a bit with partial games counting as games played even though the QB didn’t have a full game’s worth of stats.
Methodology
Here’s the average stats of the QBs in those comparable seasons, broken into three categories:
|
Average Statistics of QBs with Comparable Seasons to Patrick Mahomes in 2018 |
||||||
|
Comparable Category |
Comparable Season |
Next Season |
% of Comparable Season |
|||
|
Pass Yd/G |
Pass TD/G |
Pass Yd/G |
Pass TD/G |
Pass Yd/G |
Pass TD/G |
|
|
Both |
327 |
2.9 |
304 |
2.3 |
93% |
77% |
|
Yards |
317 |
2.2 |
289 |
1.9 |
91% |
86% |
|
TDs |
300 |
2.8 |
286 |
2.1 |
95% |
75% |
The “Both” category are those comparable seasons where a QB had both 300+ passing yards per game and 2.5+ passing touchdowns per game. The “Yards” group are those seasons where QBs topped 300 Yd/G, including the QBs in the “Both” category. The “TDs” category includes the QB seasons with over 2.5 TD/G, again including the QBs in the “Both” group.
The Comparable Season columns are the averages of the yards and TDs by the QBs who had years like Mahomes’ 2018. The Next Season columns are what those comps did in the following year – what we might expect from Mahomes in 2019. The percentages (%) in the last columns are the Next Season numbers divided by the Comparable Season stats. I can use those percentages to develop another estimate of Mahomes’ likely 2019 numbers.
Obviously the “Both” category would be the best to use to predict what Mahomes will produce in 2019, but there are only five seasons in that group. So the “Yards” group (21 seasons) gives us a bigger sample to predict his passing yards and the “TDs” category (11 seasons) to estimate his passing TDs.
Per game, Mahomes averaged 319 passing yards and 3.1 passing TDs in 2018. Using the “Both” Next Season stats, he’ll average 304 and 2.3 in 2019 (straight from the table). If I use the Both percentages, I get 297 (93% of 319) and 2.4 (77% of 3.1). Doing the same for the applicable Yards and TDs numbers, converting everything to a 16 game season, results in four sets of estimated 2019 numbers for Mahomes. The averages, minimums, and maximums are shown in the table above.
