Chris Simms and Ahmed Fareed discuss factors for how Patrick Mahomes ended up at Texas Tech University, as opposed to a bigger football school like Alabama.
Video Transcript
AHMED FAREED: How about Patrick Mahomes?
CHRIS SIMMS: Yeah.
AHMED FAREED: Let’s talk about that guy.
CHRIS SIMMS: Right
AHMED FAREED: Matthew Sibley. Given you- Chris Simms- saw that Mahomes was going to be a generational talent in the draft, why wasn’t he at a better college, e.g. Oklahoma, Alabama, A&M, or the Longhorns? So he went to Texas Tech.
CHRIS SIMMS: It’s just-
AHMED FAREED: He was on a bad team.
CHRIS SIMMS: Yeah. I mean, this happens a lot. You go through time, there’s a lot of quarterbacks. Phil Simms, how did he end up at Morehead State? Right? Joe Flacco, how’d he end up with Delaware?
AHMED FAREED: Chris Simms, Texas. That hasn’t been a very good football for a long time.
CHRIS SIMMS: Right. How the hell did that- that didn’t work. Right. He went out on a limb there to go to that school.
I think, like we talk about with the NFL and everything else, you know, first off, these are growing kids. And sometimes they’re not grown to their full potential when they’re being recruited and people are trying to get them to come to the big-time school when they’re a junior in high school. Right? That’s where I used to get mad at the University of Texas, and this is where their fall-off began. They were having- they were committing kids their junior year. And I was like why? We’re Texas. Make them wait. There’s going to be a whole bunch of kids that are going to put on 30 pounds of muscle and become a tenth faster. They’re going to be better than the 20 you just committed next year. Right?
And that was really the fall of the Mack Brown era. He started 25 commitments, and they had no spots left their senior year. Right? So they were locked in to guys where it’s oh, wait. This guy’s a better player than the guy we already committed now. Oh shit. Right? So that was the end of that.
So that’s what happens here. Growth. And just like anything, sometimes the politics, or how good was his team? How much did he throw the ball in college football? What was the level of competition he was going against at that high school in Texas where he was at? So I think all of that plays into it a little bit, right? And you just don’t get the hype and get it going to where those top schools want you.
Or he’s not going- there’s so many things here. Of course, I have deep knowledge of this because of my own life, my brother’s life, my brother and dad train all these high school kids. But a guy like Patrick Mahomes, I bet you he wasn’t going around to the Elite 11 Camp because he was playing baseball and going, oh, I’m awesome at third base. I’m not going. Same with Josh Allen. I’m hitting home runs right now, I’m not worried about making a tour and politicizing myself for high school football here. I’m going to be a high school kid. And those all lead to the things we’re talking about, as far as the big schools not recruiting them.
AHMED FAREED: His dad wasn’t good at making a highlight tape, right? Had some bad plays in there.
CHRIS SIMMS: I know. I mean-
AHMED FAREED: Who knows what it was?
CHRIS SIMMS: -it’s a lot of stuff. Exactly right. I mean-
AHMED FAREED: He was a three-star recruit, but his senior season he had 4,600 passing yards, 50 touchdowns, he had 948 rushing yards, and 15 rush touchdowns.
CHRIS SIMMS: Yeah.
AHMED FAREED: That was ranked the 12th best dual-threat quarterback after those numbers.
CHRIS SIMMS: So I don’t know. I don’t know what division that was in Texas. But it could have been- just like Texas Tech. It could have been looked at like, oh, they just throw and nobody’s really that good there. It’s just stats. How good is he really, right? And it’s a little side-army and all this. He’s unpolished, right? I could see all those things going on as far as the recruiting of Mahomes.
Where it took a guy like Kliff Kingsbury, who played a little quarterback, to go wait, that’s [BLEEP] awesome. And I actually have Baker Mayfield here, but I’m going to push him out the door because this guy here’s doing freaky things, and Alabama and Oklahoma don’t want him. So I’ll take him. And that’s where you’ve got to give Kliff Kingsbury some credit, for sure.
