Kansas City Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes says microchip in ball would help goal-line calls
On any given Sunday, NFL fans can be left wondering if a player actually carried a ball across the goal line.
When the offense moves the ball to the 1-yard line and tries a quarterback sneak or a running back plows into the defensive line, the mass of bodies can hide where the ball is located when a runner’s knee touches the ground.
Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes offered a suggestion for the NFL that theoretically could solve the problem. While on the WHOOP podcast, Mahomes proposed putting a microchip in the football.
“I’ve always thought the chip in the ball has to happen sometime, where if you cross the line, it just tells you a touchdown,” Mahomes said.
“But it’s also the human error thing, it’s kind of like baseball, balls and strikes, it’s just part of the game,” Mahomes continued. “The biggest thing to me is when they get in the pile by the end zone, there is literally no way to tell if he’s in the end zone or not. It’s like you said, it’s just whatever they call. ... I’m sure it’ll happen soon enough.”
Mike Pereira, the former NFL official who is now a rules analyst for Fox Sports, in 2017 noted a chip already is in the football. It’s used for the league’s Next Gen Stats.
But Pereira told NBC Sports’ Peter King that it’s not feasible to use it on goal-line plays.
“You can put a chip in the ball, but then you better put a chip in the guy’s knee, too,” Pereira said. “The ball is one thing, but it’s not over until the knee hits the ground or the shoulder hits the ground. How accurate is that going to be?”
Pro Football Talk’s Michael Davis Smith shared some of those same concerns after reading this story.
Pereira called himself a traditionalist.
“Although I feel like we’re taking the game so far off the field now with technology, I am concerned that we go a little bit too far. I’m also a little bit of a traditionalist,” he said at the time. “You could put up lasers to replace the chain crews, for example, but I love the tradition of some old guys running out there with the chain.”
WHOOP, which calls itself a “personal digital fitness coach,” tracks various aspect of an athlete’s training. Mahomes is an investor in the company.
In the podcast, Mahomes discussed a wide-range of subjects. Here are a few highlights.
His pre-draft grade
Before the 2017 NFL Draft, Mahomes received a second-round grade from the league’s draft advisory board and it motivated him.
“I had gotten like a second- or third-round grade from the draft advisory board, which is usually pretty accurate,” Mahomes said. “And so I kind of just told myself that these next few months, I’m gonna put everything I have into making my body be in the best shape possible. My conditioning, the way I eat, everything like that, and I worked my tail off, and I was able to get drafted with the 10th pick overall. And so just to make that climb and to know that all that hard work that I put in was was paying off, it kind of jump-started my career of knowing that that’s how I need to work at all times if I want to continue to be successful.”
Tom Brady’s visit
After New England won in overtime in the AFC Championship Game after the 2018 season, Tom Brady made a point of visiting Mahomes.
“It wasn’t like he said a lot to me,” Mahomes said. “He said, ‘I appreciate how hard you work — and I can tell what type of guy you are by how you act and how you handle yourself out there on the field. I can tell your teammates like you.’ He said, ‘Just continue to do that. Continue to do that and you’ll continue to have success.’”
He nearly quit football
Mahomes considered ending his football career while in high school.
“I went on a sophomore day at the University of Texas and they sent me over to play safety,” Mahomes said. “I knew I wasn’t going to be a safety or anything like that. So on the way back home, my dad said, ‘You should just focus on baseball and basketball because that’s the way you’re going to go.’ I thought about it and more than anything, I just didn’t want to not be there playing with all my buddies when they were in football season. And so I just went out there and tried out for quarterback.”
You can listen to the entire conversation here.
This story was originally published May 20, 2021 at 10:10 AM.
