Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid says that quarterback Patrick Mahomes will not play in his team’s regular-season finale against the Los Angeles Chargers this Sunday, via Myles Simmons of Pro Football Talk.
Blaine Gabbert will start in Mahomes’ place, and Reid added that “we’ll rotate the other guys in as we go,” indicating that the Chiefs may pull some of their other starters throughout the game.
The Chiefs captured the AFC West division title with their win over the Cincinnati Bengals this past weekend. They are now 10-6 and are locked into the No. 3 seed in the conference, so whether they win or lose in Week 18 does not matter. They cannot move up or down in the standings.
Mahomes went 21-for-29 with 245 yards and a touchdown against the Bengals in what was his first outing without throwing an interception since Week 12, when Kansas City beat the Las Vegas Raiders.
On the season overall, Mahomes has thrown for 4,183 yards, 27 touchdowns and 14 picks while completing 67.2 percent of his passes and posting a passer rating of 92.6 in what has been a down year for his standards.
For comparison’s sake, Mahomes averaged 308.8 passing yards per game in 2022, which led the NFL. This year, Mahomes is logging just 261.4 yards per game and has only eclipsed the 300-yard mark four times this season. Three of those occurrences came over the Chiefs’ first seven games.
Kansas City’s offense has labored as a whole in 2023. The club is averaging just 22.4 points per game, a far cry from the league-best 29.2 points per game it posted a year ago.
The Chiefs got off to a 6-1 start this season, but they have since gone just 4-5 in what has been a rather uncharacteristic malaise for the defending Super Bowl champions..
Kansas City has won two Super Bowls while making three Super Bowl appearances over the last four years, so it seems silly to count out Mahomes and Co. going into the postseason, but there is no doubt that things don’t seem quite right with the Chiefs this time around.
Going into 2023, Patrick Mahomes had made five straight trips to the Pro Bowl.
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