There wasn’t much drama in Patrick Mahomes’ answer this week, and there probably shouldn’t have been.
When he was asked by Bleacher Report about Josh Allen replacing him as the NFL’s top-ranked quarterback, Mahomes didn’t roll his eyes or remind anyone how many rings he owns. He didn’t even throw out the classic “I’ve got receipts” line that athletes love this time of year.
Mahomes Says He Understands the Change in Ranking as the Top Quarterback
“You understand it,” Mahomes said. “Coming off injury, and we didn’t play as well as we wanted to the last few years, you’re gonna drop in the rankings of some sort. But at the same time, there’s a lot of good quarterbacks on that list, and I’m just happy to be a part of it.”
For a player who’s spent years hearing people call him the best quarterback in football, it would’ve been easy to push back. Instead, he sounded like somebody who understood exactly why the conversation had changed.
And maybe that’s because it has.
Josh Allen Makes Sense as Top-Ranked Quarterback
If you were ranking quarterbacks today and not three years ago, not based on career accomplishments, Josh Allen has a legitimate case to be the NFL’s top-ranked quarterback. That’s not some outrageous media invention. It’s a reasonable football opinion.
Allen stayed healthy and put together an elite season from a statistical standpoint. Buffalo kept winning, and it found itself in playoff contention again.
Meanwhile, Mahomes was trying to survive one of the roughest years of his career before knee injuries shut everything down. Those are the kind of things people look for when filling out rankings.
There Was a Period Where Nobody Could Touch Mahomes
With that said, it’s incredible how quickly things changed.
Not long ago, saying anyone had passed Mahomes would’ve started an argument. You would’ve had Chiefs fans pointing to the playoff wins. Neutral fans would’ve pointed to the rings. Even people who loved Allen usually ended the debate the same way.
Now, it’s not that hard to argue that Allen is the NFL’s top-ranked quarterback. Not just because Mahomes had a rough season, but because of his season-ending injury. It’s easy to lower Mahomes list on the ranking order now in case he falls flat on his return. Then, analysts can say “I told you so.”
Football has a funny way of making us prisoners of the moment. One season becomes the whole story.
It happens every year.
A quarterback throws for 5,000 yards, and suddenly he’s untouchable. The next season, he misses six games, and people start wondering if his best football is behind him. Nothing really changed except the calendar.
Mahomes Handled the Question Well
Mahomes would have looked much worse if he’d complained about his spot on the top-ranked quarterback list.
Imagine him rattling off his résumé or talking about respect. It would’ve felt unnecessary because, frankly, nobody has forgotten what Patrick Mahomes has done. One injury-plagued season doesn’t erase nearly a decade of dominance. While he may not be the current top-ranked quarterback, nobody will question that he will go down as a first-ballot Hall of Famer and one of the all-time greats.
Then again, one injury-plagued season also doesn’t guarantee he walks right back into the No. 1 spot.
That’s the part some Chiefs fans probably don’t want to hear.
Coming back from ACL and LCL injuries isn’t automatic, even for great players. Kansas City also has to prove last season was the exception rather than the beginning of something bigger. We won’t know that answer until the games start.
Allen Has His Own Pressure Now
Being called the NFL’s top-ranked quarterback sounds great until every Sunday becomes another test of whether you deserve it. That’s how these things work. Once you’re on top, everyone waits for the first bad game so they can ask whether somebody else belongs there instead.
Mahomes lived with that for years. Now it’s Allen’s turn.
Maybe that’s why Mahomes didn’t waste much energy talking about the rankings. What good would it do?
Seriously. Try remembering who was considered the league’s best quarterback before the 2018 season or the 2021 season without looking it up. Most fans can’t. What they remember is who was celebrating in January and February.
That’s where reputations are built, or in Sam Darnold’s case, rebuilt.
Whether Allen keeps the title of top-ranked quarterback is a completely different discussion. That’s not something an offseason poll can answer. It’s something the next five months probably will. And if Mahomes is healthy, don’t be surprised if we’re having this exact same debate again next summer, only with the names flipped back around.
