Patrick Mahomes is dominating the NFL Draft without even lifting a finger

NFL teams are constantly foaming at the mouth when it comes to the thought of finding a franchise quarterback. For good reason, too. The right guy can make a franchise a yearly contender for the foreseeable future and he gives his respective team the best shot, possible, at winning a Super Bowl.

At the same time, teams often trip over themselves and set themselves up for failure when it comes to picking "their guy". This often comes in the form of a hefty first-round trade-up and it can set the team back a long time if things goes awry.

There's one recent trade-up that worked to perfection, however, and that was the Kansas City Chiefs' decision to trade from No. 27 to No. 10 back in 2017 in order to draft Patrick Mahomes. We all know the history, since, but just to remind everyone: Mahomes is a two-time NFL MVP, three-time Super Bowl winner and Super Bowl MVP, and he's currently considered as the best QB, as well as the best overall player, in the game.

There was a good amount of risk involved, at the time. Mahomes was a raw prospect and it was unclear if the traits that made him successful at Texas Tech would translate to the NFL. But, they did, and the rest is history.

It's fair to say that trade -especially now that Mahomes is who he is- prompted more teams to take big swings via substantial trade-ups. The Bills traded up from No. 12 to snag Josh Allen at No. 7 in 2018, the 49ers traded up from 12 to 3 in order to get Trey Lance and the Bears traded up from 20 to 11 to nab Justin Fields in 2021, and now, it's heavily speculated and theorized that a franchise, or franchises, will make a big trade into the top-5 in order to get an elite signal-caller in what is deemed as the deepest QB class in history.

Sure, two of the above examples have worked out very well, but the other two in Lance and Fields have fallen flat on their faces. If a team does in fact move up, a 50/50 success rate isn't ideal when it comes to putting the future on the line.

"We're all chasing Patrick [Mahomes]. That's part of the problem, here," ESPN's Dan Orlovsky said on the latest episode of Get Up. "Everybody wants their next Patrick. Patrick was a little bit of a dice roll, because he had some flaws with his game and there was risk attached to it. With J.J. McCarthy, there is not a ton of risk, in my opinion. Jayden Daniels, there's not a ton of risk, in my opinion. I don't know if they're going to be Patrick.

"I think there's got to be a little bit of a risk assessment with some of these picks. Maybe they're not going to be the greatest quarterback, ever, in the history of the world. But I also think that we're gonna get a really, really, really good player that we can win a ton of games, at a minimum, with."

There are so many uncontrollable variables that play into a quarterback's development and career, but one variable teams can control is how much they initially invest in the player. Teams can't think, nor expect, every elite prospect will turn out like Mahomes. That's a quick way to get to the unemployment line for the player and the coaches - no matter who it may be.

The league will keep chasing Mahomes and maybe one day, a lucky franchise will catch up. But until that happens, it'll be interesting to see just how NFL teams go about doing so.