Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes made league history on Monday, when it was reported that he agreed to a ten-year contract extension with the defending Super Bowl Champions. ESPN’s Adam Schefter was first with the news of the ten-year deal, and then Ian Rapoport and Tom Pelissero from the NFL Network filled in some of the details:
The #Chiefs and QB Patrick Mahomes have agreed to terms on a 10-year extension worth $503 million, sources tell me and @TomPelissero. He gets $477M in guarantee mechanisms and gives the ability for Mahomes to have outs if the guarantee mechanisms aren’t exercised. No trade clause
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) July 6, 2020
This massive contract, which will rework the quarterback contract landscape, completes a process that Mahomes moved along his first season as a starting quarterback: The offensive paradigm shift that has been unfolding in front of us over the past five years or so in the NFL.
This, at least, was an argument I advanced in a piece for Pro Football Weekly back during the 2018. A piece that had a rather unusual starting point.
Thomas S. Kuhn.
A philosopher by trade, in the 1960s Kuhn published a history of science titled “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.” In this work, now viewed seminal in the area, Kuhn challenged the then-widely held theories of scientific evolution. At the time, people in scientific fields believed that change was made through a series of small steps, a “development-by-accumulation” model where scientists would change and alter their theories based upon gaining small bits of new information or data. Kuhn shattered that model, positing that scientific evolution – or revolution as he termed it – was due to larger scale shifts. That periods of “revolutionary science” would shatter the old models and create new “paradigms.”
Kuhn, perhaps foreshadowing the resistance that might be in place in the NFL, wrote this about how the “old guard” would try and stave off drastic change:
Lifelong resistance, particularly from those whose productive careers have committed them to an older tradition of normal science, is not a violation of scientific standards but an index to the nature of scientific research itself. The source of resistance is the assurance that the older paradigm will ultimately solve all its problems, that nature can be shove into the box that the paradigm provides. Inevitability, at times of revolution, that assurance seems stubborn and pigheaded, as it sometimes becomes.” Thomas S. Kuhn “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” pp 151-152
Now think back, for a moment, to the draft evaluation process with respect to Mahomes.
Coming out of Texas Tech, and an Air Raid offense, Mahomes was viewed with skepticism in many NFL circles. In this Pelissero piece from April of 2017 this passage is illuminating:
Mahomes has been scrutinized as much as any other quarterback by NFL teams — 15 of which brought him in for a private workout and/or visit. (The Cleveland Browns, Chicago Bears, Arizona Cardinals and the New York Jets did both.) Those who have spoken with Mahomes say there’s a lot he doesn’t know but nothing in his makeup to suggest he can’t figure it out. His recall is excellent.
“He was the Big 12 scholar athlete of the year, so evidently he’s smart,” Mahomes’ father said. “He picks up stuff quick.”
Some NFL coaches are fundamentally opposed to drafting anyone from an “Air Raid”-type offense, a term Kingsbury says is misused as it pertains to Texas Tech. Pro Football Hall of Fame executive Bill Polian, among others, has been publicly dismissive of Mahomes as a legitimate prospect.
Beyond the offense he ran, there were questions about his mechanics, and many who thought that Mahomes would never be able to execute at a high level as a result. Even some of his biggest games in college, such as a huge shootout against Baker Mayfield and Oklahoma, were used as evidence against him. Evidence that, in that game at least, he was an undraftable quarterback.
However, those who did believe, had their reasons as well.