“I’m Outright Furious on the Commentary Surrounding Patrick Mahomes”: Nick Wright Defends the Chiefs as the Best Team in the NFL

The Kansas City Chiefs are 13-1, but there’s no denying they’ve been having a down year. Patrick Mahomes is nowhere near the MVP conversation; the defense isn’t quite as dominant as it was in 2023, and they’ve really struggled against some of the worst teams in football. Despite all of that, Nick Wright still believes they’re the best team in football.

While speaking on Kevin Clark’s This Is Football podcast on ESPN, Wright got visibly agitated by the narrative surrounding the two-time defending champion Chiefs and their world-class QB. He called himself merely “annoyed” by the commentary surrounding the Chiefs, but that the discussion around Mahomes made him “outright furious”. He discussed the Chiefs first.

“Has there ever in the history of sports been a two-time defending champion that brought back the same coach, the best player, has the best record, one of three teams that has had no terrible offensive games, is the only team that’s had no terrible defensive games. And the narrative the entire year has been what’s wrong with them? Here’s the four other teams better than them?”

We’re not going to take Wright to task too much on his rant because his identity as a pundit is built around “hot takes” that will get people talking. Suffice it to say, he’s way off here. Two-time defending champions very rarely go for the three-peat successfully, so it makes sense not to place too much emphasis on that during the third season.

We would also argue that the Chiefs have had countless awful offensive games. They couldn’t even manage 20 points against the Denver Broncos and the Las Vegas Raiders and have yet to top 30 points in a game. Their defense also allowed 30 points to the Buffalo Bills, and 27 points to the 3-11 Carolina Panthers.

Regardless, Wright went on to discuss the narrative surrounding Mahomes, as the three-time Super Bowl MVP goes through one of the roughest seasons of his career to date. He talked about how NFL media has fallen into the trap that Mahomes isn’t the greatest, as they often do when he and the Chiefs go through a rough stretch.

“After everyone in the media took a solemn oath: ‘I’ll never make this mistake again.’ It took ’em, a month of awesome football, and they’re making the mistake again, which is, ‘Man, is actually, the best quarterback alive debate, a debate? Let’s have it.'”

“And in fact, when you look at it, it’s not a debate, it’s one guy [Josh Allen], and it’s not the guy with all the MVPs, all the championships, all the playoff success. And that’s an insult to the audience’s intelligence, that everyone’s participating in, and it makes me angry,” the analyst added.

Wright would be correct in his anger if there were people saying Patrick Mahomes wasn’t the best QB alive. But that’s not what most people are saying. The debate people are having right now is on who’s been the best QB in the NFL in 2024. Who should win the MVP? Mahomes is clearly not in that discussion.

No doubt, he will turn it on once again come January, but for this regular season, Mahomes has been far from the best QB in the game. He has fewer passing yards than Kirk Cousins, fewer passing TDs than Sam Darnold, the same amount of INTs as Bo Nix and Anthony Richardson, and the same yards per attempt as Will Levis. Not exactly MVP material.

The blame is far from solely on Mahomes, however. We believe the main factor here is the porous offensive line he’s playing behind. He’s been sacked 35 times this year, 9th-most in the league. That’s seven more than his next-worst season in that category, and there are still three games to go.