Mahomes tumbles outside the top 10 in new QB rankings following a difficult season and injury. Can he bounce back?
The Kansas City Chiefs enter a pivotal offseason after not making the playoffs in 2025.
Superstar quarterback Patrick Mahomes is coming off a torn ACL that he suffered toward the end of the season, and questions remain about whether or not tight end Travis Kelce will retire.
The Chiefs restructured Mahomes' deal, which gives them more cap space to work with this season while turning some of the money into a signing bonus for the Chiefs' signal-caller.
And, going into the offseason, a big question is whether or not Kansas City can get some more help for Mahomes.
If Kelce does retire (nobody knows at this point), that will be a massive loss to the offense.
Mahomes didn't play badly by any means. He finished with 3,587 yards passing with 22 touchdowns and 11 interceptions, but he had four straight games with an interception and a 3-INT performance against the Houston Texans, one week before he suffered the injury.
With the season over, Nick Shook of NFL.com ranked every QB, and Mahomes dropped quite a bit from where he was at the end of last season. Shook ranked Mahomes at No. 13, and at the end of 2024, Mahomes was ranked No. 7.
He also has five top-five finishes in his career, so seeing him outside the top-10 is new.
Mahomes was even one spot behind Indianapolis Colts QB Daniel Jones, and who saw that coming before the 2025 season?
Yet, there is a reason why, and a lot of it is due to the struggles of the Kansas City offense as a whole, as Shook wrote.
"Patrick Mahomes tried his best, but even he couldn't save the Chiefs from their demise in 2025. The devil was in the details for much of the season, and when the margin for error shrunk late, Mahomes' struggles increased, as evidenced by the 5-7 TD-INT ratio."
That final stretch before his injury was not promising. Then again, nobody on the Chiefs really played well.
Kareem Hunt led the RB room with 611 yards, and Kelce had 851 yards to lead all Kansas City pass catchers. Hollywood Brown had 587 yards, Rashee Rice had 571 yards, and Xavier Worthy had 532.
Matt Nagy's offense figured to run its course, and the good news is that Eric Bieniemy is back calling plays in KC after some time away and in other roles across the NFL and NCAA.
Perhaps Bieniemy calling the shots on offense will help Mahomes in 2026, but recovering from a torn ACL is never easy, especially for a player who moves around as much as Mahomes does.