The second best draft coverage from a newspaper is the Kansas City Star. I say that as a compliment to Terez Paylor and the gang over there because even they would recognize that Bob McGinn of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has the best draft coverage. McGinn’s annual position rankings and scouting reports are some of the most anticipated draft reports for me.
I love going back and looking at what they said about the Chiefs picks so let’s do that today starting with the Chiefs top pick, Texas Tech QB Patrick Mahomes. Here is the full report. One scout was quoted saying this:
“He’s a guilty pleasure. We all have biases. Going in, Texas Tech, dink, dunk, dink, dunk, this guy cannot translate. I left saying, ‘Love this guy. He’s so much fun.’ He pulls plays out of his (expletive) like you wouldn’t believe. It’s not dink and dunk. He believes in his arm so much that it’s a problem sometimes. He’s not ready right now. I’m not comparing him to Aaron (Rodgers), but that natural sense of making plays when they break down is unusual. Now can he make plays from structure? That’s why he’s not a top-10 pick.”
Guilty pleasure is a good way to put it. I’m sure Andy Reid thought the same thing. No coach looks at a high level quarterback like that and says, “Well, I can’t fix those flaws.” No, every coach is confident enough in himself (arrogant?) to think he can fix it and make this guy a player. Another scout thought he was too reckless.
“He has the best arm of the group but he plays crazy,” a third scout said. “I don’t even think ‘gunslinger’ is the right word. He’s reckless. … I remember seeing (Brett) Favre in his bowl game his senior year. In that game he had three or four plays you thought were a little off the wall. Mahomes might have 20 plays in a game where you go, ‘What are you doing?’”
The Chiefs staff is hopefully good enough to minimize those risks and maximize that arm strength. I have a lot of confidence in the Chiefs staff and their ability to do this. For a while now I’ve said the Chiefs feel like they’re run by grownups. They have a plan for Mahomes and they’re going to stick to it.
Read the rest of the reports on the quarterbacks. It’s really interesting knowing what we know now.