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Did Patrick Mahomes Break NFL Record for Most Dropped Interceptions? Let's Take a Look

We made a tweet on our account earlier on Tuesday regarding Kansas City Chiefs superstar quarterback Patrick Mahomes, and man was it controversial. 

Mahomes, to no one's surprise, is balling out this 2020-21 NFL season. He currently has 38 touchdowns to only six interceptions on the season, while passing for 4,740 yards, completing 66.3% of his passes, and a 108.2 rating. 

However, four out of Mahomes' six picks on the season have come in the last three games. He had three against the Miami Dolphins, but showed some struggle against the Atlanta Falcons last Sunday. 

Mahomes is always a betting favorite in NFL games, and sports fans utilizing darmowe gry kasyno are always tempted to pick the Kansas City Chiefs in any given matchup. 

While Mahomes ended up having two touchdowns and securing the win, he had only a 54.5% completion percentage and a 79.5 QB rating. During the broadcast of the game, CBS mentioned that Mahomes has 16 dropped interceptions on the year, an NFL record. 

Mahomes had a couple of dropped picks in that Falcons game actually:


I found out about this crazy stat a day later, and searched Twitter. I ended up coming across a video that showed Mahomes' dropped picks on the season, although it is biasly edited. I ended up posting it to the FootBasket Twitter account:


I was not expecting the traction that it was going to end up getting, though:


So what is to make of these stats? Honestly, really nothing. Mahomes is still the best quarterback in the game, although Green Bay Packers' Aaron Rodgers is trying to reclaim the throne with his play this year. 

Nonetheless, even if Rodgers wins MVP (which I think he should this year), Mahomes has his Chiefs currently at 14-1 and with the No. 1 seed in the AFC. He will finish, at worst, second or third in MVP voting. He still can win Offensive Player of the Year as well. 

No, dropped picks is not a real stat. I don't know how people were keep track of it, but folks on Twitter were acting as if I created the stat. No guys, I am just reporting what I see. I found it interesting, but I see that it probably is not fully accurate. 

The only thing I could find about it was this piece from USA TODAY regarding Mahomes' 2018 debut season as a starter where he threw for over 5,000 yards with 50 touchdowns to just 12 interceptions. 

While he had only 12 picks on 615 passing attempts, Football Outsiders noted that there were 10 dropped interceptions that season, leading the NFL. So it looks like FootBall Outsiders keeps track of such info.
Football Outsiders has been tracking this data since 2011, and they’ve found that a quarterback’s “adjusted interception” total (which adjusts for dropped picks, interceptions on Hail Mary attempts and those that were first tipped by receivers) is, on average, 30% higher than their actual interception total. That allows Football Outsiders to come up with an “expected interception” number for every quarterback:

“[A] player with 13 adjusted picks would be expected to finish with 10 actual interceptions. We can use that ratio to estimate how many interceptions a quarterback “should” have thrown based on his adjusted interceptions. Carr, for example, had 20 adjusted interceptions. Dividing that total by 1.3 results in a figure of 15.4. However, he only threw 10 official interceptions. That difference of 5.4 makes Carr the luckiest quarterback of 2018. He’s followed by Mahomes (-4.2), Rodgers (-4.2), Tannehill (-3.3), and new Denver Broncos starter Joe Flacco (-2.5, in only nine starts).”
Mahomes makes the game look so easy that it should not be a surprise that he takes risks where he throws balls that can be intercepted. I would not be surprised one year he has a season where has a "high" amount of picks, but it would only be considered a "high" number for him. 

If he were to throw 15-plus interceptions in a season, I can definitely see some people overreacting and having issue with it. But for someone who throws the ball a lot every game, the fact that he has thrown less than 12 picks every season so far in his young career is impressive. 

The guy who made the video about Mahomes also made one for Rodgers, by the way:


All in all, I have the Chiefs and Packers in the Super Bowl. We might see some dropped picks happen in that game from both QBs. However, every legendary QB has caught lucky breaks like this—whether it's Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Joe Montana, and others. 

No, I do not have any narrative or vendetta against Mahomes. He's the man, and the best player in football right now. These "dropped picks" do not change anything.

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