Brett Veach recalls moment he knew Patrick Mahomes would be a perfect fit for Chiefs
The 2015 Texas Tech football team finished with a 7-6 record and lost to LSU in the Texas Bowl.
It may be hard to imagine, but watching film of the Red Raiders from that season was the first step toward Patrick Mahomes being drafted by the Chiefs.
Mahomes completed 63.5% of his passes for 4,653 yards with 36 touchdown throws and 15 interceptions. Mahomes didn’t get a single Heisman Trophy vote that year, although the top four finishers are all known to NFL fans today: Derrick Henry, Christian McCaffrey, Deshaun Watson and Baker Mayfield.
In the Texas Bowl, the Red Raiders trailed 21-20 midway through the third quarter before the Tigers turned on the jets and finished with a 56-27 win.
Chiefs general manager Brett Veach, however, fell in love with Mahomes after watching tape of him that season.
Veach told Albert Breer on the MMQB podcast that he normally watches four or fives games when he begins evaluating a player.
But with Mahomes, Veach went down a rabbit hole.
“There’s an element of when you’re watching a player, looking back on your notes and the impact the player left,” Veach told Breer. “And when you get a special player, he’s one of those guys that you start the tape and then when you look up, you don’t even realize that four or five hours have passed and you’ve watched every single game because you’re not even thinking of this as an assignment. It’s just something that is a fascinating experience.”
Veach, who was the Chiefs’ co-director of player personnel at the time, initially sat down to watch offensive linemen at Texas Tech after the Red Raiders’ 2015 season, which was Mahomes’ sophomore season.
When the tape started, Veach couldn’t believe how Mahomes was able to keep Tech in games when it was clearly overmatched.
“Pat’s a guy that at the time had some numbers,” Veach said, “but he wasn’t a guy that at that time, the spring before his junior season, he wasn’t a guy that was coming out, a first-round pick, you know ‘watch this guy.’ He was a guy that put up some stats and watching his offensive linemen, I remember starting with the LSU game, and damn, this quarterback. I was like, ‘Who is this guy?’ And I’m like, ‘This is ridiculous. This guy’s making throws and this team is completely undermatched and he is just putting on a show, and this team should be getting blown out, but this kid is just all over the place.’
“Then you’re looking up — well how tall is he? And where’s he from and what’s his story? And is he going to come out? And just getting completely infatuated by the guy. I think he’s one of those guys that you watch and you see he has the unique and uncanny ability to make people around him better. And that’s obviously a standard line that people use — ‘well, he makes people better’ — but this was visual evidence that was so eye-popping.”
Veach began envisioning how Mahomes might fit in a Chiefs offense designed by coach Andy Reid with better skill players on the field.
It was at that moment Veach knew Mahomes would fit in well with the Chiefs.
“Here you are — you’re watching Texas Tech, they’re playing an LSU team that has a bunch of first-round picks that year on both sides of the football, and he single-handedly is unstoppable. So you want to talk about making people around him better and making things happen when things shouldn’t happen. And then your mind starts to think, ‘what if you put him with coach Reid? And what if he’s able to understand the West Coast offense? And what if you put a ton of talent around this guy? If this guy can line up against LSU and have first-round defensive linemen breathing down his neck, have first-round corners covering his wideouts, have first-round safeties playing the deep half of the field and he is able to just — on his own — move the ball up and down the field and make something out of nothing, what if you put him with coach Reid?
“And what if he had better receivers than the other team, and what if he had offensive linemen that could protect him? The sky could be the limit for this guy because this guy is like nothing we’ve seen before.
“And that’s kind of how it starts. And when the organization feels the same way after a certain time, you start thinking, ‘Wow, this could be special.’ That was probably my first thought, too.”
When Veach took over as general manager shortly after the Chiefs drafted Mahomes, he knew he wanted to surround Mahomes with talent.
“I think my first free agent signing was Sammy Watkins. ... The first time I got a chance to sign a free agent, I signed Sammy Watkins,” Veach said. “I’m like we’re putting receivers around this guy. This is going to be fun. And then who would have envisioned, 5,000 yards and 50 touchdowns later?”
Veach covers a lot of topics in the talk with Breer and you can listen to the podcast here.
