An interesting suggestion for how the NFL keeps its official statistics came from a somewhat unlikely source today: Patrick Mahomes’ mom.
In the first quarter of today’s Kansas City-Washington game, Mahomes threw a pass to Tyreek Hill that Hill bobbled, and it bounced off Hill’s hands and into the hands of Washington’s Kendall Fuller. Officially, that’s an interception for Mahomes.
But Randi Mahomes tweeted that it shouldn’t have been.
“Ok PEOPLE that should not be an interception on the QB,” Randi Mahomes tweeted. “that should be a fumble or anything else. just putting it out there. GO CHIEFS.”
In response to another tweet saying that interceptions off a receiver’s hands should count as a stat for the receiver, not the quarterback, Mahomes replied, “Amen you are reading my mind.”
There’s no reason the NFL couldn’t change the way it keeps its official stats in the way Randi Mahomes proposes. In baseball, the official scorer determines when an error is made, and in those cases, the runner reaching base is not held against the pitcher. The NFL could also adopt a model like that, where an interception off a receiver’s hands is treated as an “error” by the receiver and not an interception.
But the league has been keeping stats the way it does for decades, and is unlikely to play. And so Mahomes got his seventh interception of the season today, whether his mom likes it or not.
