KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The count to four is among the original Patrick Mahomes rebukes made public, and it was a beauty.It came to us back in 2020, when, as Mahomes and the Chiefs were putting it on the Ravens, he used four fingers to remind everyone his peers had voted him only the fourth best player in the league — conveniently, three spots behind Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson. During that game, some of us at The Kansas City Star joked that we’d split up our postgame stories by each writing on a separate digit. Dibs on the middle, right?Wouldn’t you know it, they did it again. The NFL released its newest top-100 list Friday, and well, four years later, the players picked Mahomes fourth once more, dropping a piece of meat onto the plate of a quarterback who salivates at this sort of thing.It’s had about the reaction you’d expect across social media, the outlets that toggle between bringing irrationality to the rational and, here, rationality to the irrational.But if I could interject for a moment, and duck as I finish this sentence: Mahomes being ranked fourth is ... perhaps defensible.Hear me out. There’s inconsistency in the voting turnout, the timing of the voting and the guidelines for how to vote. Most players skip it, and those who do participate do it long before the Super Bowl run because they’re long gone by the time Mahomes is hoisting another Lombardi Trophy.The key here, though: Several base their votes on the current regular season, and I guess I’ll be the one to remind that Mahomes finished seventh in the Most Valuable Player race last season. He had zero first-place votes, zero second-place votes and zero third-place votes, and none of us said a peep.If that’s the logic — this season and only this season — it’s fine. (But that’s literally the only reason that’s crossed my mind for why it would be fine.) It’s far more puzzling, in that case, the same electorate included a guy who played all of four snaps last year on the list. Aaron Rodgers came in at No. 92. Maybe some of the players were impressed with his weekly medical advice.Or, you know, maybe some players operate under one set of guidelines, and some operate under another.Mahomes did have a career-worst year, and I cannot underscore enough that’s relatively speaking based on the bar he ...
