Patrick Mahomes is, by far, one of the most remarkable athletes that Lubbock and the Texas Tech Red Raiders have ever seen. He accomplished quite a bit in the small handful of seasons that he played for the Red Raiders.
That includes what he was able to do for Texas Tech in 2016, when he joined a very small, and very impressive, group of Red Raider quarterbacks. Under the tutelage and leadership of Kliff Kingsbury, who helped orchestrate a really impressive offense for Mahomes to thrive in, TTU’s starting quarterback was able to throw for over 5000 yards.
And because of that, he was able to become just the fourth ever Texas Tech quarterback to have multiple seasons in which he threw for over 4000 yards. Along with that, Mahomes also became the fifth ever Red Raider to throw for more than 3000 yards in back-to-back seasons.
Texas Tech football history: Patrick Mahomes became just the fourth Red Raider to have back-to-back seasons of more than 4000 passing yards
Mahomes was pretty remarkable through his first three games, where he threw for 483 yards, 540 yards, and 470 yards. A couple weeks down the line, Mahomes threw for 504 yards on the road against Kansas State. Halfway through the season, he managed to get into a shootout with Oklahoma, when he completed 52 of his 88 pass attempts for 734 yards against the Sooners.
He then threw for just 206 yards against TCU and would later have another underwhelming performance against Iowa State. But, in Mahomes’ final game for the Red Raiders, he put up 586 yards and six touchdowns against the Baylor Bears.
Kingsbury was only able to get five wins in 2016, which meant Texas Tech didn’t get to a bowl game. And if you take the total number of wins and the total number of passing yards and do a little bit of math, you’ll find that Mahomes threw for a thousand yards per win that season.
In 2016, Texas Tech’s starting quarterback had 41 passing touchdowns and 5052 yards against just 10 picks. And the Red Raiders won just five games.