KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Days after the worst statistical game of his NFL career, Patrick Mahomes said he got up in front of his Kansas City Chiefs teammates and essentially said the team’s recent offensive struggles were on him.
“You can just watch the tape and know that I need to play better in order to have success,” Mahomes said Thursday after his career-low 6.0 QBR in last week’s game against the Tennessee Titans. “There were plays where guys were open. There were plays where we had matchups down the field that I didn’t hit that I usually would give those guys opportunities to make plays.
“I’ve said something to them that I’ve got to be better. At the same time, they have that mindset that they’re going to try to build me up. It’s a thing where you’re not going to play your best game every single game, and that’s when you have to rely on your other guys to kind of step up and make plays for you.”
Mahomes, whose previous low QBR of 37.4 came last season in a game against the Denver Broncos, has thrown at least one interception in each of the past six games. He has nine this season, compared to six all of last year.
“It’s just stuff that I’ve always got to work on, and I kind of lose sometimes during the season and have to get better with,” Mahomes said of what went wrong against the Titans. “It’s hanging in the pocket, working on my footwork, staying on time, all that stuff like that.
“You see it kind of get me in certain games every single year, and it’s something I have to go back to and learn from and be better at. There were times where I maybe could have stepped and found a soft spot in the pocket where [instead] I kind of got out of there and tried to make something happen. … Whenever we don’t get going as an offense, it’s usually because I’m doing little things like that.”
Coach Andy Reid said he had no worries about how Mahomes would respond to the worst game of his career.
“He’s not going to hide or shy away from anything,” Reid said. “If there’s a problem, he’s going to attack it and work to fix it. That’s the way he’s wired.
“I believe in him. He doesn’t hide things. A lot of guys make excuses for whatever the issue might be. He’s upfront about it. He’s not afraid to talk to the players about it, the coaches about it. Then he goes and works on it, which is the most important thing. It builds the confidence in you.”