BFFs: Kansas City Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes doesn’t forget those who helped get him here
The group-text message chain includes eight or nine friends, a collection of guys who have known each other for more than 15 years. They’re in their mid-20s now, living their own lives hundreds of miles apart, in some cases. But they grew up together. Went to high school together.
On Sunday mornings, before the day’s NFL games are played, they all reconnect, exchanging what could best be described as hype messages.
“Let’s go!” one will say.
“Let’s do it!” another will reply.
There are memes and GIFs involved sometimes. A lot of exclamation points. If you’re a sports fan and your friends root for the same team you do, this probably all sounds familiar.
With one exception.
In this group, the last message of the morning comes from Patrick Mahomes. You know, the 25-year-old star quarterback who leads the Chiefs into the Super Bowl on Sunday for the second straight year.
He turns his phone off a couple of hours prior to kickoff, but just before he does, he looks through the text chain with his buddies from back home in Texas, sees the motivational comments and fires off a reply.
The gist?
I’m ready.
“It’s my favorite part of every game,” said Jake Parker, part of the group text and one of Mahomes’ best friends. “It’s basically us all telling him good luck and him telling us he’s about to go ball out.
“And then does.”
Amid the rush of newfound fame, Mahomes’ inner circle remains where he won Little League tournaments, where he got into arguments with his buddies during backyard football, where he was not yet a household name.
In Tyler, Texas.
The group of friends played sports together from Pee Wee through their time at Whitehouse High School, a town that neighbors Tyler. The starting five on the basketball court comprised Mahomes’ top receivers on the football field. They would improvise plays, almost as if their connection had lasted a lifetime. Because it had.
Not much has changed.
OK, that’s not entirely true. A lot has changed. They separated in college. They got jobs. Some got married. Some moved away.
And, oh, yeah, one of them just happened to become the highest-paid athlete in North American sports history. One of them happened to become the guy who is beating the athletes they all used to sit on the couch and watch on TV.
But other than that tiny little detail, in this circle of friends, not much has changed. Really.
“It’s pretty crazy to see the status that he has and the people that he’s able to be around,” said Ryan Cheatham, another childhood friend. “And yet how much time and effort he puts into us. It’s something that really makes you grateful for the kind of friends you have.”
Big on loyalty
Mahomes is engaged to his high school sweetheart, Brittany Matthews. They began dating when Mahomes was just a junior in high school. This year, they will welcome their first child, a daughter, into the world.
During the offseason, Mahomes still works out with the first trainer he ever had, Bobby Stroupe. Flies to Fort Worth just to do it.
Mahomes has been spotted hanging out with — or told stories about hanging out with — LeBron James, Post Malone and a slew of celebrities.
But they are additions to his life, not replacements. Those who knew him before the world knew him remain his foundation.
“I’ve always been big on loyalty,” Mahomes said at last year’s Super Bowl. “That’s one of the things I’ve always believed in. The people who have been with you since the beginning and have been with you since you weren’t anybody, kinda bringing them with you.”
It’s a thread that runs through his life. Even now. As Stroupe has phrased it in the past, Mahomes “values people who spoke belief to him, people who believed what he believed.”
The friendships, in that case, reveal more. It’s why he feels at home in Kansas City, particularly with this organization. The Chiefs believed in Mahomes more than the other 31. They traded draft capital to ensure he would land here.
He hasn’t forgotten.
“I talked about my family, with Brittany, my mom and dad, my support team that has been with me the entire way, and they have continued to be with me and treated me the exact same,” Mahomes said this summer, after signing a half-billion dollar contract extension to remain in Kansas City for a dozen years.
“I just want to thank them. The Chiefs organization, like I said earlier, Coach (Andy) Reid, Brett Veach, Mark Donovan, Clark Hunt, everybody. It’s been a team effort the entire way, and I think that’s the special thing about this organization is that, like Veach said, there’s trust among everybody. As much as I trust in them, they trust in me.”
Another Super Bowl trip
On Sunday evening in Tampa, Parker and Cheatham will be among a group of friends watching Mahomes in the Super Bowl in person. Mahomes landed them tickets. Parker actually has other obligations on Saturday, but he’s flying in the morning of the game. Wouldn’t miss it.
He anticipates it will be one of the strangest things he’s ever experienced.
“The fact that he’s playing Tom Brady, it’s insane,” Parker said. “When we were kids, we looked up to those guys. And now I’m sitting here telling you that he’s better than Tom Brady. It’s crazy. It’s just crazy.”
They used to talk about Brady and Aaron Rodgers. Cheatham grew up a Cowboys fan and tried to emulate Tony Romo when he played.
On Sunday, Romo will provide color commentary on the game. Mahomes will play in it.
“It’s hard to put into perspective that I looked up to Tony Romo, or that all of us watched, say, Aaron Rodgers or Tom Brady,” Cheatham said. “And then with Patrick, I remember playing with him. I remember taking snaps with him. I remember being in the locker room with him. And now he’s playing against those guys. It’s very difficult to correlate those two things. It’s difficult to believe that he’s one of those guys now.”
Don’t get him wrong. They say they saw this coming — but to a certain extent. Parker said he figured Mahomes would be a professional athlete of some kind. Maybe football. Maybe baseball, like his father.
They all thought it.
But maybe they just didn’t truly complete the thought all the way through to this point. To Super Bowls. Plural.
“It’s a wild experience. It really is,” Parker said. “We’re grateful just to be able to go along with this ride.”