In Defense of Chris Collinsworth

Per Express US, football fans are allegedly upset that "any time a quarterback performs well, Collinsworth inevitably brings up [Kansas City Chiefs quarterback] Mahomes."

Is that true? I don't listen to NFL color commentary closely enough to have an opinion.

In this case, the quarterback in question is Jayden Daniels of the Washington Redsk ... er, Commanders, and I think there's a fair case to be made that Daniels specifically is someone to compare to Mahomes. On ability, yes. On style -- passing while running, running the ball, etc. -- yes, too. But mostly on this:

Daniels is part of the first class of quarterbacks to come into the NFL in "the Mahomes era."

He entered college in 2019, right before the Chiefs, with Mahomes at QB, made their first Super Bowl appearance in 50 years.

He was drafted earlier this year, the year the Chiefs recorded their fourth appearance, and third  win, of the last five Super Bowls.

Mahomes is simply the guy you're going to compare great young quarterbacks to.

He's also the guy that most great young quarterbacks working their way through the college football system and into the NFL probably want to be like and are carefully studying.

Over the last few years, Mahomes has started changing the way those younger quarterbacks play football (and Andy Reid has similarly influenced an entire generation of coaches/coordinators).

Prior to Mahomes, the guy younger quarterbacks admired and emulated was Tom Brady, and I suspect you heard a lot of game commentators making that comparison back then.

But right now Mahomes is the guy at the quarterback position. So when a commentator sees a young quarterback playing well, and in a style that Mahomes has put his trademark on, he's going to name-check Mahomes ... often.

These guys have a job, and that job is to fill the time between plays with words. Some of those words can be only semi-relevant ("beautiful day here in Buffalo, only 23 inches of snow in the last 24 hours and it's a toasty 29 degrees!"). Others can be only historically relevant ("that play reminds me of the 1993 AFC championship game when ...").

But some of them are going to have to be relevant to this season and recent seasons. And guess which team, and which quarterback, are 15-1 for this season so far, with four Super Bowl appearances and three Super Bowl victories in the last five years? That team and that quarterback are the current standard of measurement against which all the other teams and all the other quarterbacks can expect to be constantly measured. Chris Collinsworth noticing that Jayden Daniels measured up to that standard last night isn't a bad thing.