Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes already might have been the new “face” of the NFL already. That theory could have been solidified on Monday.
ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported that the Chiefs and the Super Bowl MVP are in agreement on a 10-year contract extension that will carry the QB through the 2031 season. It will be the richest contract in NFL history.
The deal is worth $450 million, which can reach up to $503 million, which tops Mike Trout‘s contract from MLB. The baseball star signed a $430 million contract over 12 seasons last year. Mahomes’ contract is an investment many saw coming. In fact, even though Mahomes’ deal marks the first time in North American sports that a NFL player has sports’ most-expensive contract, there’s still few that are surprised.
So now let’s get to the Buffalo Bills. Dots can be connected from this $450 million pay day to the folks in Orchard Park. Most reading this will know how.
At the 2017 NFL Draft, there are 10 other clubs that could have had a chance at signing Mahomes to this contract. That’s how many teams passed on him, and included in that bunch at the No. 10 spot is the Bills. At the time, Buffalo head coach Sean McDermott had only been on the job for a short time and decided to trade the No. 10 pick at that draft to Kansas City. McDermott has a past with Chiefs head coach Andy Reid, so the connections there were pretty clear.
Even though Reid now has the most expensive player in all of sports under his wing in KC for the next decade, there’s no reason the Bills should feel that upset much about missing out on Mahomes. In reality, the other nine teams that passed up the opportunity to draft Mahomes have more reason to be upset about it. In some cases, much more.
First we’ll start with the Bills. In trading that pick, the Bills moved from pick No. 10 to 27, nabbing LSU cornerback Tre’Davious White. The successes for this move by Buffalo needs little explaining. Sure, the Bills might’ve passed up the best quarterback in this trade, but we’ve seen a lot more lopsided deals in sports history. In return, the Bills ended up with perhaps the best defensive player in the entire NFL in White. Plus, there’s more.
Ramifications of the trade were felt again one year later. Along with the 27th pick, the Bills landed a future first-round pick in 2018. Buffalo used the pick it acquired from the Chiefs to orchestrate a trade up. The Bills jumped from pick No. 22 to pick No. 16 to select Virginia Tech linebacker Tremaine Edmunds, who now serves as the quarterback of Buffalo’s stout defense. Plus, Edmunds himself, like White, is a Pro Bowler already in his career. He’s just looking for an All-Pro season like White to catch up.
So technically, if we’re looking at this in one way: In this trade, thus far, the Bills and Chiefs each earned two Pro Bowl selections. White and Edmunds each have one while Mahomes has two. Of course… there’s MVPs and titles Mahomes has as well. But still, all-in-all, hindsight is 20-20, and no one knew exactly how good Mahomes would be. Just ask the other nines that also decided Mahomes wasn’t worth drafting in 2017. Again, by comparison, the Bills should feel the least bad of any of these teams that they didn’t select the 24-year-old QB.
In factoring in why the Bills should feel “less bad” about it, we’re also going to bring in another player: Josh Allen. Let’s do a little comparing, shall we? Here’s an evaluation of picks one to nine in the 2017 draft , how they went, and some insight into why the Bills have fared better:
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