thesack12 wrote: I imagine some of these came off of "free plays" where Patrick knew he could just throw it up there and see what happens.
Still that is an insane stat. If you went back and dissected each of those 17 would be picks, there would probably be a more than a handful of them that drastically effected the outcomes of games. Although without looking into them myself, I don't know how apparent the defensive penalties were. Some may have been egregious, while others may have been of the ticky tack variety.
Without context, stats like this will certainly fuel the "NFL is rigged/scripted" crowd.
I will say, nobody gets calls the way Mahomes and the Chiefs do. And sure, they usually are penalties, but you can call a penalty on any NFL play. Seems like the Chiefs get them disproportionately often. And given how much their OL holds, it can get pretty absurd.
There was a third-down pass to Deebo in our game that was similar (only in terms of the contact; the KC play was much further downfield) to the one 4th and 16 PI penalty that won the game for the Chiefs. Defensive player was clearly there ahead of the ball in both cases, though not by all that much. No call for us, clearly a call for KC.
That said, this is part of what Makes Mahomes special. He can keep plays alive and then deliver accurate balls downfield late in a play in a way that really stresses a secondary. It's hard to cover that long without committing a penalty.