Meet two of Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ best buds: His dogs, Steel and Silver

In an elaborate setup, Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and his fiancee, Brittany Matthews, learned the gender of their first baby in October. They stood outside in front of a collage of blue and pink balloons — a “boy or girl?” sign in the backdrop — and had friends watch them through a Zoom call.

All before two special guests finally revealed the news.

Their dogs.

Steel and Silver, both pit bulls, walked down a white aisle runner, their paws drenched in pink water-based paint so they would make paw prints as they stepped. (It’s a girl.)

The two dogs have been a part of the couple’s biggest life moments in 2020. The gender reveal. The Thanksgiving pictures. The Christmas cards.

“Brittany is pretty mom-like already with those dogs,” Mahomes said.

They’re a full-fledged part of the family, and perhaps the best example of just how wide Mahomes’ star has become: Steel and Silver have nearly 200,000 followers on their Instagram page.

The dogs have almost 200,000 followers. On their own account. That’s a social media following totaling nearly half the population of Kansas City.

They’ve dressed in Santa outfits and posed for pictures. They’ve donned Chiefs collars, as you might expect. Heck, once they even dressed as Chiefs coach Andy Reid, mustache and glasses and all. Their social media account is updated as often as their owners’ pages.

Whom, apparently, one of them takes after.

“Me and my dog Steel are exactly the same person, except he’s a dog,” Mahomes joked while having an Instagram Live conversation with former Pittsburgh Steelers safety Troy Polamalu, his co-star in a commercial for Head&Shoulders shampoo. “His mannerisms, like the stuff he does, is literally exactly the same as me.”

And to think, this is all a relatively new experience for Mahomes. Growing up, Mahomes was actually afraid of dogs, he revealed in 2018, shortly before he took over the NFL world and Kansas City along with it.

“Until I was in high school,” he told The Star, “then I went straight to a pit bull.”

Mahomes gifted a dog to Matthews on Valentine’s Day in 2017, when he was still playing quarterback at Texas Tech and Matthews lived in Tyler, Texas, where the two met and became high school sweethearts.

“He’s an awesome dog — very loving, very energetic,” Mahomes said in 2018. “So just having him, he’s like my best friend. It’s a great dog to have.”

They named their first dog Steel, which — hold your ears — is technically named after the Pittsburgh Steelers. Matthews, Mahomes revealed during the conversation with Polamalu, grew up a Steelers fan and picked the name.

Mahomes has since flipped the meaning.

“I say it’s because of the color of his skin,” he said.

It would only make sense, in that case, to name the second one Silver. The couple added Silver to their household in early 2019 as Mahomes navigated his first NFL postseason — which was maybe a bit sooner than Mahomes had wanted.

“It was a joint decision,” Mahomes said, before adding, “She definitely wanted it. I was trying to wait until the offseason, but she wanted to get it up here quickly.”

And now the family is growing by one once again. With the dogs far from forgotten.