Comparing Texas Tech's Air Raid Quarterbacks

On the Air Raid podcast, Nathan mentioned this was only Mahomes' fourth full game. His performance was stellar and got me wondering how it compared to other Air Raid quarterbacks' first four games. So I checked and found some pretty interesting stats. Please note this is for comparison's sake only and not made to bash past quarterbacks or Mahomes.

Here are the highlights:

• Mahomes has the lowest number of completions and completion percentage. Those are pretty much the only knocks when comparing him to other Air Raid quarterbacks.
• He has the most yards of any quarterback. Crazy to think he had 33 less completions than Potts, but 142 yards more than him.
• He is just a couple of tenths away from having the highest yards per completion.
• He has the most touchdowns and only three interceptions.
• Without Doege's very impressive 14/1 touchdown-to-interception ratio, Mahomes is right near the top in that category too.
• Lastly, he has the best touchdown/completion ratio by more than two completions per touchdown.

From a purely statistical standpoint, I feel Mahomes' body of work through four games is the strongest of the nine quarterbacks. Even his weakest categories (completions and completion percentage) look much better if you factor in last week's eight drops. All of sudden his completion percentage jumps up to around 62%. Having said that his completion percentage also shouldn't be much of a surprise as he is a lot more willing to air it out more than most of the past quarterbacks. I think that is part of the trade-off and personally I will take all day. Give me the opportunity to get a long touchdown or two every game. When you consider how much Tech throws the ball, you can't count on repeatedly scoring on long sustained drives. There are more negative outcomes in the passing game which lends itself to fewer sustained drives.

I hope he continues to look for the deep ball. Bring on the Miners

**Note that Kliff's "first" four games does not include the final game of the 1999 season under Head Coach Spike Dykes. I didn't feel that would be a fair comparison.