Earlier on in Patrick Mahomes’ career when the offense was humming, the quarterback seemed to hit a deep ball every week.
In his first year as a starter, Mahomes averaged 8.8 yards per pass and 13.3 yards per completion.
While Kansas City won 15 games last season to secure the AFC’s No. 1 seed and won its third consecutive AFC Championship, Mahomes finished 2024 with a career-low 6.8 yards per pass and 10.0 yards per completion.
Part of that was a receiving corps affected by injury. But going into 2025, Mahomes wants to get back to throwing downfield.
“There was opportunities in games for deep shots that I either didn’t take or we missed barely, and I think if we can get back to hitting some of those throws — we preached about this last offseason — it opens up the rest of the offense,” Mahomes told reporters in a videoconference on Wednesday. “That helps the run game, that helps the medium-pass game, everything.
“You want to get back to that, defenses are starting to creep up a little bit more and force us to get back to the deep throws. We have to be versatile enough to be able to do both, hit the deep shots and hit the underneath stuff, and that’s when we’ll be at our best.”
Mahomes is now going into his eighth season as a starter, and that experience means he’s seen plenty from defenses. But he doesn’t want to get caught up in all of his knowledge when he’s on the field.
“I think just this last year especially, sometimes you give guys too much credit, and knowing what the coverage is, and how it’s supposed to be played, and you know what your reads are,” Mahomes said. “At the same time, you still have to go through your progression, and that’s something that I have to continue to do. So, even if it’s a two-high coverage or whatever it is, there’s still chances for me to throw the ball down the field.
“I have to go through the progressions the right way and trust in the play call and trust in the protection, and that’s something that I’ll try to get back to this year and stuff that I have to continue to get better at.”
In 2024, Mahomes completed 67.5 percent of his passes for 3,928 yards with 26 touchdowns and 11 interceptions in 16 games. He then completed 66.3 percent of his throws for 679 yards with five TDs and two picks in three postseason contests.
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