ArrowChop: Was Patrick Mahomes Overpaid?

With Mahomes earning the largest contract in sports history, will it be labeled as an overpaid contract?

Hello again everyone and welcome to another week of the ArrowChop! This is the column where we look at the positives/negatives of a certain Chiefs/NFL issue and look at both sides of the aisle. Then you, the readers, will come to your conclusions after I lay out the case. So sit back, relax, and enjoy as we breakdown this week’s hot topic.

It’s official Chiefs fans! Patrick Mahomes has signed a 10-year extension worth over half a billion dollars; making it the highest-paid contract in all of American sports. After two monstrous seasons, the Chiefs front office knew they had the ultimate weapon at quarterback and they did everything to keep him, even if they had to give him half ownership of the team. With that being said, fans and analysts believe that Mahomes was overpaid and not worth $500 million dollars, but others say the exact opposite. Was Mahomes overpaid? Let’s look at both sides of the debate and decide!

Patrick Mahomes Wasn’t Overpaid

This is largely attributed to his recent/past success and his predicted future success within the league. In his already impressive two years of starting for the Chiefs, he has won the Chiefs second-ever Super Bowl, has won the MVP award back in 2018, has already broken multiple records, and so on and so forth. Also in his only two years starting, he has led the Chiefs deep into the playoffs each year like the AFC Championship in his first year starting and the Super Bowl the next. While this can show a strong reason why he deserved that much money, we haven’t scratched the surface on the predicted success he has in the latter seasons.

Sports Illustrated predicts that Mahomes will finish with the following- if he keeps up at the pace he’s at- with 685 touchdowns, over 85,000 passing yards, and over 6000 completed passes. These stats would surpass Drew Brees’ passing touchdown record, along with his passing yards record as well. Fans and analysts from all over are also predicting that Mahomes brings at least two or three Super Bowls to the Kingdom (at the very least). This shows that the ceiling is high for Mahomes’ future success in the league and gives reason for why he was paid this much. Who wouldn’t want a quarterback that has an amazing shot at pulling off these feats?

Patrick Mahomes Was Overpaid

There really isn’t much to back this point rather than this: it will break the Chiefs bank and will hinder their ability to sign new players. While the cap isn’t going to be hit detrimentally in the beginning years, the pay will get higher and higher as the years go by. This would make the team unable to resign players like Hill, Mathieu, or Kelce and/or sign players that hit the free-agent market in the future. We could see years where the Chiefs would have to pay Mahomes so much to the point where he will just have replaceable receivers coming back and forth through those years.

In closing, here are the sides to the case if Mahomes was/wasn’t overpaid. This situation is more of a “wait and see” type of deal before we can clearly decide if he was overpaid or not. In any case, I can’t wait to see what the next decade foretells for the Chiefs and Mahomes!

Thanks for reading and have an awesome day!