If you’re a defensive player in today’s NFL, apparently there are two sets of rules for hitting quarterbacks: one for regular quarterbacks and another for guys like Patrick Mahomes. Hit an ordinary quarterback cleanly and it’s called football. Hit Mahomes the same way and everybody holds their breath waiting for the yellow flag. Enough already.
Patrick Mahomes is one of the greatest quarterbacks of his generation. He’s won championships, MVPs and made plays most quarterbacks couldn’t make if you gave them three tries. So why in the hell does the NFL need to treat him like one of its little prima donnas who might break if a defensive lineman actually does his job? Mahomes doesn’t need preferential treatment. If he’s really that damn good—and I believe he is—then let him prove it under the same rules as everybody else.
If you think I’m exaggerating, we just watched a perfect example today. During Sunday’s game between the Miami Dolphins and Kansas City Chiefs, Kansas City was backed up deep in its own territory late in the third quarter, leading only 14–10. Miami had an opportunity to force a punt, get the football back and potentially take the lead. Then Dolphins pass rusher Chop Robinson broke free.
Mahomes released the football, Robinson hit him, and from what I saw, it looked like about as clean a quarterback hit as you’re going to see in today’s NFL. Robinson didn’t launch into Mahomes’ head. He didn’t dive at his knees. He didn’t pick him up and drive him into the ground. As they went down, Robinson even appeared to raise his hands rather than drive his full weight through Mahomes. It didn’t matter. Out came the flag: roughing the passer, 15 yards and an automatic first down. Instead of Miami getting off the field, Kansas City suddenly had a fresh set of downs and breathing room.
What in the hell is Chop Robinson supposed to do, disappear? He’s a defensive football player. His job is to get to the quarterback. If a defender gets there legally and still gets flagged, we’ve reached the point where we’re asking defensive players to defy physics. The NFL has legitimate reasons for protecting quarterbacks. Nobody wants cheap shots to the head, defenders destroying quarterbacks’ knees or someone getting drilled several seconds after releasing the football. But there’s a difference between protecting quarterbacks from dangerous hits and making them practically untouchable.
That’s where the NFL has created a monster, because when borderline hits become 15-yard penalties and automatic first downs, those calls can change games. Today’s Dolphins-Chiefs game is exactly why fans get pissed off. Miami was down four points and had Kansas City pinned deep. That’s exactly the situation a defense spends an entire game trying to create: get the stop, get your offense the football and give yourself a chance to take the lead. Instead, one flag changed the entire situation.
Maybe Kansas City wins anyway. Maybe Mahomes eventually leads another scoring drive. Maybe Miami gets the football back and does absolutely nothing with it. Fine. That’s football. But let the damn players decide it instead of allowing a borderline flag to become one of the biggest plays of the game.
Mahomes has become the poster child for this frustration. During Kansas City’s January 2025 playoff victory over Houston, controversial personal-foul calls involving Mahomes fueled the same debate. Referee Clay Martin later explained that officials believed one roughing-the-passer penalty involved forcible contact to Mahomes’ facemask area. Those calls don’t prove some grand conspiracy to make Kansas City win, and broader statistical analyses don’t establish that Mahomes gets every roughing call while everybody else gets nothing. Several quarterbacks have accumulated more roughing-the-passer calls over different stretches of Mahomes’ career.
But we don’t need a conspiracy theory to recognize an officiating problem. The issue is consistency. If Chop Robinson’s hit on Mahomes is roughing the passer, that exact same hit better draw the exact same flag when it’s delivered against a backup quarterback making his first NFL start. Officials shouldn’t care who’s underneath the helmet, how many Super Bowl rings he has or how many commercials he’s in. The hit should matter. The name shouldn’t.
That’s also what makes this so ridiculous: Patrick Mahomes doesn’t need an artificial advantage. Neither do Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow or any other elite quarterback. These are supposed to be the best football players on the planet. Greatness should mean beating the defense despite everything it throws at you, not having defenders terrified that completing a tackle might cost their team 15 yards and an automatic first down.
Imagine being a defensive lineman in today’s NFL. You’re 280 pounds and you’ve spent your entire life learning how to explode off the football, beat a 320-pound offensive lineman and get to the quarterback as quickly as legally possible. Then you finally get there, and in a fraction of a second you’re supposed to know whether the quarterback has released the football, where your helmet is, where his helmet is, where your body weight will land and whether he’s starting to slide—all while somehow stopping 280 pounds of momentum in midair. Maybe defenders should just start asking permission: “Excuse me, Patrick. Would it be okay if I sack you?”
That’s not football. Helmet-to-helmet cheap shot? Throw the flag. Take out the quarterback’s knees? Throw the flag. Drill him well after the football is gone? Throw the damn flag. But when a defender makes a legitimate football play and tackles a quarterback cleanly, that shouldn’t automatically become a personal foul because the quarterback happens to be one of the league’s marquee stars.
The NFL has spent years making the game safer, and that’s a legitimate goal. But player safety doesn’t require turning quarterbacks into untouchable assets. Write clear rules, enforce them consistently, protect quarterbacks from genuinely dangerous hits and then get the hell out of the way. There shouldn’t be superstar rules, playoff rules or “that’s Patrick Mahomes, so we’d better throw it” rules. There should be NFL rules, and they should apply exactly the same way to everybody.
Patrick Mahomes has already proven he’s one of the greatest quarterbacks of his generation. He doesn’t need special treatment from the officials, and he doesn’t need defensive players afraid to touch him. So stop treating him like one of the NFL’s little prima donnas and let him prove his greatness the way football players are supposed to prove it, on the football field.
