Patrick Mahomes is Riding (At Least) Two Historic Scoring Streaks

Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs have scored at least 13 points and not been beaten by more than a touchdown since he became the starting quarterback in KC.

One of the many things you'll hear about good quarterbacks is that they "always give the team a chance" to win. The NFL can be an unpredictable, indiscriminate, and sometimes cruel place when trying to win football games. The quarterback has the most say in the outcome of a game, but not 100% of it. Defenses can give up leads, coaches can make bad decisions, and referees can blow calls. A quarterback's job is to rise above the adversity and, at the end of the game, give their team a chance to win.

Patrick Mahomes is off to so many historic streaks to start his remarkable career that it would be almost impossible to name them all. From his individual statistical totals to his team's ability to put up points, he has set a new standard of excellence for the beginning of a quarterback's career. 

Two streaks in particular stand out when it comes to giving his Kansas City Chiefs "a chance to win" at the end of the game. In Mahomes' 36 games in his young career, he has scored at least 13 points and has never lost by more than seven. The historical context of each of these streaks is, frankly, astonishing.

The first streak, scoring at least 13 points, is a bit misleading and still incredibly impressive. In the 36 games Mahomes has started, the Chiefs have scored fewer than 23 points exactly one time, a Week 5 setback to the Indianapolis Colts last season, 19-13, when Mahomes was without wide receivers Tyreek Hill and Sammy Watkins and had to utilize Byron Pringle as his main weapon of attack while fighting through a reaggravated ankle sprain. That game ended Mahomes' NFL-record streak of 22 games scoring 23+ points. He began a new 23+ point streak the next week, which is currently active at 14 games in a row for the Chiefs (and includes two spot-starts by Matt Moore). That one is already the 10th-longest streak in NFL history. The next-longest active streak in the NFL is currently the Atlanta Falcons... at four games.

As for 13+ points in a row, Mahomes has done that all 36 games of his career, and the Chiefs as a team did it the last four games of Alex Smith's Chiefs career plus the two starts by Moore. That puts the team at 43 games in a row, good for the eighth-longest streak ever. The New England Patriots have the next-longest active streak at 22 games. Mahomes by himself at 36 games would be the 20th-longest streak by any team in NFL history. The record is 73 games in a row by the 2009-2013 Patriots. Extending that streak by 16 regular-season games this year would put Mahomes by himself at 52 games, good for fifth all-time, and the Chiefs at 59 games, third all-time and six away from the second-place 2010-2013 New Orleans Saints.

One great side effect of scoring points is that it's half the equation for keeping the game close in the end, and nobody has been better at keeping the other team within reach than Patrick Mahomes. He has gone his entire 36-game career never losing a game by more than seven points, which is even more remarkable when considering that only two teams have had longer streaks in the history of the league. The 2009-2011 Green Bay Packers went 45 games in a row without losing by more than a touchdown, and the 2011-2014 Seahawks did them one better with a 46-game streak. The current Chiefs, again with some help from the end of the Alex Smith era and the two Moore starts, are riding their own 45-game streak. The Buffalo Bills own the next-longest streak in the NFL at only 10 games. 

In fact, the last time head coach Andy Reid's Chiefs lost by more than seven points was an 11-point loss at Dallas in November of 2017. Before that, the last time the Chiefs lost by more than seven was a 43-14 demolition at the hands of the Pittsburgh Steelers in October of 2016. That 67-game streak of not being beaten by more than 11 points is good for third all-time behind the 2011-2016 Seahawks (95 games) and the 1988-1993 San Francisco 49ers (91 games). The next-longest active streak in the NFL is the Dallas Cowboys at 20 games. 

Andy Reid's Chiefs simply do not get blown out. They didn't for the final 29 games of the Alex Smith era, and they haven't in the first 38 games of the Patrick Mahomes era. With the way the roster is currently constructed, the smart money is on these streaks continuing well into the future.