Stop giving athletes extra credit for come-from-behind victories. When you scored is meangingless.

Theater, movies, TV sitcoms, TV dramas ALL fit the same format:

Act 1: introduce characters and protagonist and his or her compulsion

Act 2: Protagonist encounters multiple obstacles to satisfying his or her compulsion culminating in the final seemingly insurmountable obstacle

Act 3: Protagonist surmounts the insurmountable obstacle and achieves his compulsion

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When this cliche sequence happens in an athletic contest, fans, and media swoon. The winning protagonist—Mahomes in the Superbowl case—is treated as super human.

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Bunch of BS. If you wish to measure the virtues of Mahomes or any other QB, there are plenty of metrics that are quite reliable due to the Law of Large Numbers—passer rating, completion percentage, interception percentage, yards per rush, and many more.

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Number of wins is a much smaller number. It is also affected by coaching, players at each position, offense numbers are affected in part by defense performance of the same team—getting the ball to their offense—luck, misbehavior like after the whistle unsportsmanlike conduct.

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The definition of a win is more points than the opponent at the end of the game. There is no greater virtue or value in scoring points in the fourth quarter or OT than in having a great first quarter on offense. It does not matter when you score any of your points.

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The WSJ’s sports smart aleck columnist Jason Gay has a column today titled “Cranky Chiefs Get Their Storybook Ending.”

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Note the phrase “Storybook ending.” That is precisely what I said at the beginning of this post.

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A point scored any time in a football game is the same as any other point scored in that game.

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I know about the three-act theater formula that is used in ALL dramas and sitcoms because I am a professional writer. But Jason Gay and the other Mahomes-is-God commenters are also professional writers. Why are they entranced by this cliche sequence? Maybe because they think non-writers are entranced by it and do not recognize this ubiquitous storybook formula.

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Based on career QB metrics, Mahomes is not in the top 25 QBs career:

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Mahomes is #1 in RAW (an average metric of ten QB metrics) by ESPN for the 2023-4 season

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One of those ten metrics is Clutch (scoring late in the game) which is the BS this post is denouncing. And even then, Mahomes ranks second behind Jackson.

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Top 10 Quarterbacks by EPA/play after Week 16

EPA/play is a measure of how many points a player added to his team's expected team total.

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Position Quarterback (TEAM) EPA/play (through Week 16)

1 Brock Purdy (SF) 0.33

2 Dak Prescott (DAL) 0.222

3 Josh Allen (BUF) 0.209

4 Tua Tagovailoa (MIA) 0.184

5 Jalen Hurts (PHI) 0.146

6 Baker Mayfield (TB) 0.141

7 Patrick Mahomes (KC) 0.139

8 Jordan Love (GB) 0.133

9 Matt Stafford (LAR) 0.129

10 Jared Goff (DET) 0.122

Courtesy of rbsdm.com/stats