HENDERSON, Nev. — This is arguably the worst Chiefs team of Patrick Mahomes’ six-year run as their starting quarterback and, thanks to him, they’re still on top.
The Chiefs will play in their fourth Super Bowl in five seasons when they face the 49ers on Sunday, and somehow it simultaneously felt improbable and inevitable that they’d be here. The downside to having a star quarterback is their astronomical salary makes it difficult to keep the supporting cast intact. The upside is that someone like Mahomes can always find a way to make it work.
Teams with elite, highly paid quarterbacks usually try to cut corners on offense, assuming someone like Mahomes can elevate budget-friendly wide receivers and navigate issues that come from a reshuffled offensive line. Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Aaron Rodgers all went through it.
The Chiefs traded away top wide receiver Tyreek Hill two years ago and let left tackle Orlando Brown walk in free agency last year, both because of salary-cap concerns.
Mahomes didn’t blink.
“That’s what you’ve seen with a lot of the great quarterbacks: whatever their team needs, they’ll go out there and do it,” Mahomes said Wednesday. “The roster’s always going to change. I explain that to every single player that’s here. You never know if you’re going to be back in this game again, so try to maximize your moment and maximize your opportunity and see what you can do to make a memory that’ll last forever.”
The Bears have rarely, if ever, had a quarterback like that and they’ve been chasing it endlessly. General managers and head coaches have come and gone without finding one, and now Ryan Poles and Matt Eberflus are on the clock.
Is Justin Fields that guy? While he has made progress, there’s no indication he’s headed to superstardom.
There are at least a dozen starting quarterbacks he won’t catch, including the 49ers’ Brock Purdy, who was in the mix for MVP all season. Teams like the Dolphins with Tua Tagovailoa and the Bills with Josh Allen wonder if they have enough firepower at quarterback to take down Mahomes, and they’re well ahead of Fields.
The best quarterbacks don’t need every piece perfectly in place around them to thrive. They transcend the deficiencies.
“He uses it as a little bit of an edge,” said Chiefs offensive coordinator and former Bears coach Matt Nagy. “A guy like Patrick uses it as motivation, but he also has a special tool to be able to show those guys — that aren’t Tyreek Hill — that he believes and trusts in them.”
Mahomes still has tight end Travis Kelce, but his starting wide receivers Sunday are projected to be Rashee Rice (a rookie drafted in the second round), Marquez Valdes-Scantling (the 29th highest-paid receiver by average salary) and Justin Watson (73rd highest-paid). The Chiefs also activated Skyy Moore from injured reserve Wednesday.
Rice was the 55th overall pick and seventh among wide receivers last year out of SMU, and when a reporter asked him what the “coolest” thing was about playing in the NFL, he replied, “Patrick Mahomes.” With 938 yards receiving this season, he was second only to the Rams’ Puka Nacua in the rookie class.
“The easiest way to evaluate a quarterback is real simple: Do you win with the quarterback or do you win because of the quarterback?” Nagy said, speaking generally (he has been overwhelmingly supportive of Fields). “You can answer that question on every quarterback.”
Keep in mind that Poles came from Kansas City, where he was the Chiefs’ director of college scouting when they drafted Mahomes in 2017 and saw firsthand how clarity at quarterback changes everything.
When the quarterback is constantly a maybe, the plan is always shaky. Poles can make every right move across his depth chart, but it won’t offset a deficit at quarterback. It’s the biggest piece of the puzzle, and it anchors everything. Signing Mahomes for about half a billion dollars and scrambling each year to figure out the details is a good problem to have.
That’s why Poles said last month he’s “wide open” to drafting a quarterback with the No. 1 overall pick, which almost certainly would be USC standout Caleb Williams.
The draft is wildly unpredictable, though, and Mahomes’ class illustrated that precisely. The Bears were wrong drafting Mitch Trubisky at No. 2, the Chiefs were right picking Mahomes at No. 10 and the Texans had no idea the trouble that soon would come their way after taking Deshaun Watson at No. 12.
The Chiefs didn’t get lucky. They knew what they were doing. Coach Andy Reid recalled general manager Brett Veach bursting into his office to tell him Mahomes was “the greatest player I’ve ever seen” when they scouted his Texas Tech tape.
If Williams is an instant hit like No. 2 pick C.J. Stroud was for the Texans this season, the Bears immediately would become a contender. If he sputters like No. 1 pick Bryce Young did with the Panthers, it’ll be firing season yet again at Halas Hall.
Poles would get a landmark haul if he traded down, but there’s a reason for that — and it’s the reason he shouldn’t do it. Teams will be willing to give up everything to draft Williams because they think he’ll change everything.
Poles inherited a promising talent in Fields, drafted No. 11 overall the year before he took the job, and now has the No. 1 pick for the second consecutive draft. That’s three big opportunities to find a franchise quarterback and he must emerge with an answer.
Poles would need to be so sure that Fields, who has thrown for fewer than 200 yards in 25 of 38 career starts, could at least get within striking distance of Mahomes that he’d forgo the top pick in the draft twice in a row. But if that was clear at this point, there wouldn’t even be a debate on what the Bears should do.
