Mayfield and Mahomes sets to create another historical matchup tonight

On Monday night, the Bucs will visit the Chiefs in a prime-time showdown between Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes and Tampa Bay quarterback Baker Mayfield, the reigning Super Bowl MVP facing the NFL’s current leader in touchdown passes.

The two have faced off three times before in the NFL, with Mahomes winning all three games. But the real opportunity for any reunion of Mahomes and Mayfield is to look back on one of the most epic games in college football history: Mahomes and Texas Tech hosting Mayfield and Oklahoma on Oct. 22, 2016.

“It’s the wildest game I’ve ever worked on, for sure,” said Bruce Feldman, who was the sideline reporter for FOX Sports’ broadcast that night and wrote an oral history of the game for The Athletic in 2018.

The two teams combined to score touchdowns on 10 straight drives in the second half, the last nine all at least 75 yards long. Oklahoma junior QB Mayfield finished with 545 passing yards and a school-record seven touchdowns, and Sooners running back Joe Mixon rushed for 263 yards and five total touchdowns. Texas Tech junior QB Mahomes threw a ridiculous 88 passes, completing 52, and tied a college football record with 734 passing yards and seven total touchdowns (five passing, two rushing).

Bob Stoops’ Sooners beat Kliff Kingsbury’s Red Raiders 66-59, and each team had exactly 854 yards of total offense. The 1,708 combined yards is still a college football record. That’s within an easy throw of an actual mile of offense in a single game, and it helped elevate Mayfield and Mahomes as two of college football’s most prolific passers.

“That really helped Baker Mayfield win the Heisman Trophy the next year, and frankly put him in that category as a Heisman finalist. And I don’t think Patrick Mahomes is a first-round draft pick, let alone Kansas City trading up to get him, without that outstanding performance,” said FOX Sports national college football analyst RJ Young, who got a graduate degree in professional writing from Oklahoma in 2012. “It’s a precursor of what that [Sooners] program would look like for the next four years.”

We talked to players, coaches, writers and broadcasters who were there that day in Lubbock, Texas, and remember the lunacy of so many points, so many yards — and a few flying tortillas.

“That really helped Baker Mayfield win the Heisman Trophy the next year, and frankly put him in that category as a Heisman finalist. And I don’t think Patrick Mahomes is a first-round draft pick, let alone Kansas City trading up to get him, without that outstanding performance,” said FOX Sports national college football analyst RJ Young, who got a graduate degree in professional writing from Oklahoma in 2012. “It’s a precursor of what that [Sooners] program would look like for the next four years.”

We talked to players, coaches, writers and broadcasters who were there that day in Lubbock, Texas, and remember the lunacy of so many points, so many yards — and a few flying tortillas.