SmashMouth

I went to the bottom of the internet trying to understand what it's like to have an arm like Patrick Mahomes'. I found a throw so rare that it technically doesn't exist, erased on account of a holding penalty. November 2014. Mahomes is a 19-year-old true freshman at Texas Tech, facing Oklahoma, in only his second start. It's third-and-10 at the Sooners' 39-yard line. He's been coached to look at a pair of receivers in sequence and, if they're both covered, make a play. One, two, go. He takes the snap and is under immediate pressure -- "one, go" -- and he scampers left, not fast but elusive, away from the rush but into a trap. He's within a yard of the sideline and all four Sooners defensive linemen are closing fast ... until, with his weight moving left and a rusher's helmet at his chin, Mahomes snaps his arm -- in that instant, it's his only body part in motion, as if isolated for maximum effect -- and the ball assumes a trajectory that seems impossible without more of a windup, the physical expression of a metaphysical quality, a radical confidence known only by a blessed few. The ball hisses; it spirals fast and tight; it seems to alter the physics and change the possibilities of a football field -- hovering low as it sails across and deep -- until it sticks to a receiver's chest in the end zone as Mahomes hits the ground. I watched that throw 20 times. I saw improvisatory football genius and sheer stones. I saw a man making calculations and assessing risks I couldn't compute. I watched the throw until I was certain of what I was looking at.



And then I sat down with him and raved about passes like it. And he took the compliments with a dull stare, as if none of what I attributed to it ever occurred to him. It was just a throw. A throw he always makes -- and has made since he first held a ball.

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