Patrick Mahomes led the Kansas City Chiefs to 15 wins last season, but overall, it was a disappointing campaign for the QB. And we’re not even thinking about that embarrassment in the Super Bowl. We’re thinking about his regular-season performance. Not only did he fall short in the postseason for the first time in three years, but he also let fantasy managers down across the country after a second straight subpar statistical season.
Advertisement
He failed to throw for 4,000 yards for the first time in his career, and he also threw just 26 TDs, tied for a career-low. He also had his lowest rushing output (58 attempts, 307 yards) since 2019. That meant he finished 11th in the QB fantasy rankings by season’s end. And after a similarly soft campaign in 2023, fantasy experts have lost confidence in the three-time Super Bowl MVP.
Field Yates, one of said experts, wanted to stress that this is coming entirely from a fantasy perspective. He had Mahomes listed ninth on his fantasy QB rankings. He sat behind Lamar Jackson, Jayden Daniels, Jalen Hurts, Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, Baker Mayfield, Bo Nix, and Brock Purdy. Yates made his case.
“Back-to-back seasons, Patrick Mahomes has exactly four games with 20 or more fantasy points. Lamar Jackson last year, just as a reference point, had 14 in one year. So we’re talking about a totally different stratosphere because he’s not a running quarterback in the way that Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen and Jalen Hurts, and Jayden Daniels are. And guys who I have ranked ahead of him include the likes of Bo Nix, who, by the way, had 98 rush attempts last season. “
.@FieldYates has Patrick Mahomes ranked at No. 9 on his NFL fantasy football QB rankings pic.twitter.com/W1VUHLj5Ks
— Get Up (@GetUpESPN) August 12, 2025
It’s true that all of those guys are better runners than Mahomes, but Yates drew his stats pretty conveniently. He looked at Mahomes over the last two seasons, but the year before that, in 2022, Mahomes had 12 games of 20+ fantasy points and never went below 15 all year. He can sling it when he needs to or wants to, and we have a feeling he will want to in 2025.
Nix’s rushing ability makes his place above Mahomes somewhat fair if you expect Mahomes to continue to take it easy in the regular season like he has in the last two years. There’s no way Purdy should be ahead of him, however. Yates further justified his rankings by saying that K.C. was too pragmatic to trust one of their players in fantasy.
“But the reality for this Chiefs team is that while they should be better on offense than last year. And they should protect Patrick Mahomes better. There are gonna be weeks where the Chiefs say, we’re gonna win this game in the way that we feel like we need to. … But the days of him being considered in the same breath as Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, Jalen Hurts, Jayden Daniels … are on hold.”
Over the last two years, that is how the Chiefs operated. However, after that jolt to the system they got from their Super Bowl loss, we expect them to attack the regular season more aggressively than they have in the last two years. And when we say them, we mean Mahomes and the offense, especially.
One could argue that for the first time in his NFL career, Patrick Mahomes actually has something to prove in 2025. He’ll want to get that sour taste out of his mouth. And to do that, he’ll want to put up gaudy numbers like he did in 2022 when he won NFL MVP as he passed for 5,000+ yards and 40+ TDs.
