When it comes to television analysts being fans of players, it’s hard to top Cris Collinsworth and Patrick Mahomes or Dan Orlovsky and Matthew Stafford.
Orlovsky and Stafford were teammates in Detroit, and the ESPN analyst and former Lions backup has always praised him effusively, personally, and professionally. That has earned him pushback and trolling from folks who know he can’t really be impartial in his analysis.
Cris Collinsworth and Patrick Mahomes weren’t teammates, of course. But the way the NBC analyst talks about the Kansas City Chiefs quarterback has become a meme in its own right.
On Monday’s edition of The Dan Patrick Show, the host put Collinsworth on the spot. Does he actually love Mahomes more than Orlovsky loves Stafford?
Does @CollinsworthPFF love @PatrickMahomes more than @danorlovsky7 loves Matthew Stafford? 😂 pic.twitter.com/u2vibClHzH
— Dan Patrick Show (@dpshow) September 24, 2026
“Ooh, God, that would be tough. But yeah, probably, I guess,” Collinsworth admitted.
Collinsworth then talked about how he always gets stick from fans in every city he visits because they assume that he hates their team. That’s a common talking point with diehards for any national television analyst who doesn’t openly cheer for their team.
He also referenced comedian Nikki Glaser making light of Collinsworth’s love of Patrick Mahomes. The longtime analyst then told Dan Patrick that he wants to tell Mahomes that he’s going to rip him on a broadcast just to get the narrative to take a break.
“Now she’s starting in on my love affair of Patrick Mahomes. And I almost told Patrick when we had our meeting, ‘Hey, man, one of these games I’m just going to rip you for no apparent reason. Would you be good with that?’ Knowing Patrick, he’d be like, ‘Yeah, it’s fine, don’t worry about it,'” Collinsworth joked.
The funny thing is that this did happen with Dan Orlovsky and Matthew Stafford. After the Rams suffered a blowout loss to the 49ers in Australia after their failed trip down under, the ESPN analyst criticized the play of his friend and former teammate in a fairly harsh way. Of course, there might have been a little sarcasm in calling him stupid, ignorant, and selfish, like he was sending a message to the people who thought he was physically incapable of saying a negative word about his former teammate.
But Cris Collinsworth hasn’t done that for Patrick Mahomes yet, so it’s fair to say that he’s in the lead when it comes to analyst-quarterback relationships.
About Matt Yoder