Cris Collinsworth watched Patrick Mahomes scramble for eight yards on third-and-8 Sunday night and genuinely couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
Not because it was particularly spectacular. The Chiefs quarterback stepped up in the pocket, the Lions brought four rushers, and Mahomes took off when nothing opened downfield. He absorbed a couple of hits, kept churning, and got dragged down two yards short of the first down around the 35-yard line.
It was fine. It was a quarterback taking a hit on a scramble. It happens dozens of times every Sunday.
But to hear Collinsworth tell it on NBC’s Sunday Night Football, you’d think Mahomes had just reinvented the position.
“What quarterback does that?” Collinsworth asked, and he wasn’t being rhetorical. “I mean, really? He’s gonna get hit and turned around. He got whacked. Most quarterbacks go down before they even get down to the whacked part of it. He’s gonna get whacked and then he’s gonna turn around and get whacked again. I mean, he’s just a fighter. He really is. He’s just a fighter.”
Collinsworth genuinely seemed baffled that a quarterback would fight for extra yards on a scramble, as if Mahomes had just invented the concept of not immediately sliding or giving himself up.
Baker Mayfield does this every week. So does Justin Fields. And Josh Allen. And Lamar Jackson. And Jaxon Dart. And Kyler Murray. And probably 15 other quarterbacks across the league on any given Sunday.
Just hours before, Mayfield spun away from two San Francisco 49ers defenders who had him completely wrapped up, stayed on his feet somehow, and picked up 15 yards to extend a drive.
Mayfield should have been sacked twice on the same scramble and somehow turned it into a first down that kept a scoring drive alive. Mahomes picked up eight yards and got stopped short. Both plays featured quarterbacks fighting through contact on scrambles. One just happened with Collinsworth in the booth, instead of Jim Nantz.
Mahomes is excellent at extending plays. Nobody’s arguing otherwise. But suggesting he’s the only quarterback who takes hits and keeps going is where Collinsworth loses us — and everyone else at home watching.
Collinsworth admitted earlier this year that he doesn’t care if people think he’s biased toward Mahomes because he genuinely likes him. Fair enough. The NBC analyst has spent years finding creative ways to praise the Chiefs quarterback, and he’s earned the right to be a fan.
Mahomes has also earned the right to be praised without Collinsworth inventing qualities he doesn’t uniquely possess.
The 30-year-old Texas Tech product has three Super Bowl rings and has changed how the position is played. Scrambling through contact isn’t what sets him apart. It’s just what mobile quarterbacks do.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.