Tag: patrick mahomes interception

Bills rookie CB Kaiir Elam picks off Patrick Mahomes in the end zone

Buffalo Bills rookie CB Kaiir Elam had his second career interception at the best possible time — against Patrick Mahomes in the end zone.

The Buffalo Bills have been dealing with injuries in their secondary all season. Tre’Davious White, their best cornerback, is still recovering from the torn ACL he suffered last season. Safety Micah Hyde, 50% of the NFL’s best duo at his position when healthy, is out for the season with a neck injury. Defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier has been rotating guys in as need be throughout the season, and one of the stars so far has been rookie cornerback Kaiir Elam, the 23rd overall pick in the 2022 draft out of Florida.

Through the first five games of his inaugural NFL campaign, Elam had allowed 17 catches on 23 targets for 176 yards, 72 yards after the catch, no touchdowns, one interception, one pass breakup, and an opponent passer rating of 77.4.

And with 3:28 left in the first quarter of Sunday’s Bills-Chiefs game, Elam came up as big as he possibly could with this end zone interception of Patrick Mahomes, who was pressing to get a touchdown pass to receiver Marquez Valdes-Scantling.

Great, acrobatic catch by the rookie, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.

Patrick Mahomes pressed his luck once too often on Chiefs’ final drive

Taking risks is part of Patrick Mahomes’ greatness, but in this AFC Championship game, the gunslinger game caught up to him in the end.

When Patrick Mahomes hit Mecole Hardman for a three-yard touchdown pass with 5:04 left in the first half, the Kansas City Chiefs held a 21-3 lead over the Cincinnati Bengals, and it looked for all the world that Mahomes and his crew were headed to their third straight Super Bowl.

But the Bengals roared back in championship form, tying the game with 14 seconds left in the third quarter. Joe Burrow threw a two-yard touchdown pass to Ja’Marr Chase, the Bengals converted the two-point try, and it was 21-21 at that point.

The key play came from Cincinnati defensive tackle B.J. Hill, whose tip interception set the Bengals up for that score.

B.J. Hill’s spectacular Big Man INT leads to Bengals tying Chiefs in AFC Championship game

The two teams traded field goals in the fourth quarter — Harrison Butker’s 44-yard field goal with time expiring sent things into overtime with a 24-24 score. When the Bengals lost the overtime coin toss, and Mahomes got the ball first… well, we were probably all thinking the game thing, right?

This game is over. 

But Mahomes made two killer mistakes on his first and only overtime drive. He managed to avoid paying for the first, and he paid dearly for the second.

On the second play of overtime, Mahomes tried to hit receiver Demarcus Robinson on a slant, cornerback Eli Apple jumped the route, and had Apple held onto the ball here, this was a pick-six, and your ballgame in the other direction.

So, Mahomes wriggled his way out of that one. But on the very next play, Bengals safeties Jessie Bates and Vonn Bell bracketed receiver Tyreek Hill downfield, and the two defenders combined to make an incredible, game-clinching interception.

On the replay, you can see the great job Bates did of getting his hand in to deflect the ball to Bell without committing pass interference. If sacks can be split between defensive players, this was a case where the interception should have been split between Bates and Bell.

Burrow drove his team downfield, and with 9:26 left in overtime, rookie kicker Evan McPherson booted the 31-yard field goal that sent the Bengals to their first Super Bowl since the end of the 1988 season.

As for Patrick Mahomes, he now has the entire offseason to get over those throws that went the wrong way.

It doesn’t take much at all when you’re trying to get to the Super Bowl. Whether you’re on the right side or not.

B.J. Hill’s spectacular Big Man INT leads to Bengals tying Chiefs in AFC Championship game

Bengals defensive tackle B.J. Hill’s interception of Patrick Mahomes might be the key play of the AFC Championship game.

We already know that the best play any offense can run is the touchdown pass to an offensive lineman. Trying to cover a guy at least 6-foot-3 and at least 300 pounds… well, why doesn’t every offense just build the plane out of THAT?

The Bengals don’t have a THICC SIX touchdown this season, but they may well have saved their season with one big guy doing one spectacular thing. With 2:23 left in the third quarter of the AFC Championship game, Patrick Mahomes tried a short pass off an RPO, but it was defensive tackle B.J. Hill — all 6-foot-3, 303 pounds of him — who tipped the pass and picked it off, returning the interception three yards to the Kansas City 30-yard line.

Five plays later, Joe Burrow hit Ja’Marr Chase for a two-yard touchdown…

…and the subsequent two-point conversion from Burrow to receiver Trent Taylor to tie the game at 21.

If the Bengals win, the 18-point comeback would tie the 2006 Colts for the biggest reversal in a conference championship game — Indianapolis was down 21-3 to the Patriots in the first half, and wound up winning the game, 38-34.

And it wouldn’t have happened without that Big Man Interception from B.J. Hill.

Patrick Mahomes’ bad interception luck in 2021 is payment for his previous good fortune

Patrick Mahomes threw his 10th interception on Monday night. His unfortunate season is as much about luck as any kind of regression.

There are two kinds of interceptions: There are the interceptions a quarterback throws that are his fault, and there are the interceptions a quarterback throws that are not his fault. There are subgroups in those two larger groups, but you get the idea. Example: Carson Wentz threw several interceptable passes against the 49ers in Week 7, and it all came home to roost with some really boneheaded picks in Week 8. These things happen.

In the case of Patrick Lavon Mahomes II, there are the 10 interceptions he’s thrown this season, several of which are not technically his fault. Several of those picks have bounced off the hands of his receivers when in previous seasons, his receivers would have caught those passes, and probably done something amazing after the catch for yet another explosive play.

This season, it’s much more like this first-quarter interception against the Giants — a play in which the ball bounced off two Chiefs players before resting in the hands of cornerback Julian Love.

To try and break the different types of interceptions down, Football Outsiders has a metric called Adjusted Interceptions, which separates “actual” interceptions from turnovers that are the fault of the receiver (either dropped or tipped into the hands of a defender), or are in Hail Mary situations. Conversely, FO also tracks interceptions that should have happened had the defender not dropped the ball.

In 2018, Mahomes’ first season as an NFL starter, he threw 12 interceptions. Two more were listed as either Hail Mary or at the end of the fourth quarter. 10 were dropped by defenders, leaving Mahomes with an Adjusted Interception total of 21, tied for the league lead with Sam Darnold, then of the New York Jets.

In 2019, Mahomes threw just five interceptions. But five more were dropped, leaving him with 10 Adjusted Interceptions. That was way down the list for starting quarterbacks (Jameis Winston led the league with a whopping 40 in 2019), but once again, you can see how these things tend to go.

In 2020, Mahomes threw six interceptions, which gave him the NFL’s lowest interception rate at 1.0%. But he had seven dropped interceptions, and that total of 13 tied him with Drew Brees, Tua Tagovailoa, and Ryan Fitzpatrick for the eighth-most Adjusted Interceptions in the league. Wentz was first with 21, which proves that eventually, even if it takes a while, these things come home to roost.

Patrick Mahomes had thrown 24 regular-season interceptions in his career before 2021. 22 more were dropped. That he’s now thrown 10 this season, and that so many of them aren’t his fault in the ways we generally blame quarterbacks from an efficiency perspective, is more about the ball bouncing in bad ways for the Chiefs as the ball had not bounced before. Mahomes’ interception total this season is as much about the vagaries of fate and regression as they are about Mahomes “playing terribly” or “doing too much.”

Yes, Mahomes doing too much is a problem this season, but his luck has turned cold, and he’s just going to have to wait that part out. Before his luck turned cold, there were a lot of plays in which Mahomes allegedly did too much that turned into remarkable, career-defining plays.

Watch: Byron Jones intercepts Patrick Mahomes off the deflection

The Miami Dolphins generated an early turnover in their showdown with the Kansas City Chiefs

One of the biggest games of the week just kicked off, as the 8-4 Miami Dolphins are hosting the 11-1 Kansas City Chiefs. The Dolphins, under the guidance of head coach Brian Flores and defensive coordinator Josh Boyer, might have the ability to slow down Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs offense.

They delivered with an early turnover thanks to a deflection and Byron Jones:

The Chiefs are extremely creative in how they implement the screen game, as previously broken down on Touchdown Wire. On this play, Mahomes first shows a bubble screen to the left, and then a running back swing pass to the right, before looking to the middle of the field and a potential screen pass to tight end Travis Kelce. However, Andrew Van Ginkel reads the play and deflects the pass, and Jones comes down with the interception and returns it to midfield.

As Tony Romo notes, if you are going to beat Kansas City, you need to “catch a break.” The Dolphins have done that early.