A key to success of Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes could be his tongue, says neuroscientist
If you want to deconstruct what makes the Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes the NFL’s best quarterback, perhaps it’s best to start with his anatomy.
Thanks to a dynamic right arm, Mahomes can throw a ball 70 yards. Coaches also have raved about Mahomes’ brain and his “eidetic” memory. And his vision has been rated the best in the NFL.
Could another key to Mahomes’ incredible success be his tongue?
One neuroscientist believes so.
Ian Whishaw of the Canadian Centre for Behavior Neuroscience at the University of Leftbridge in Alberta has studied videos of Mahomes throwing the ball. But where others watched the result of those passes, Whishaw looked at Mahomes’ tongue.
But before poring over Mahomes highlights, it began when Whishaw studied mice that had been taught to pick up food.
“We have two components to our reach,” Whishaw said. “We lift our hand up and that’s kind of what I called an aim. And then we reach. And I noticed, they lift their hand up to the aim position. They stuck their tongue out and then they reached. And I thought that they’re actually trying to reach it with their tongue. But if it doesn’t work, then they’ll use their hands.
“That made me think that there was a close linkage between reaching with your tongue and reaching with your hand, that they’re almost interchangeable. If you can’t get it with one, you get it with the other.”
That led Whishaw to take a closer look at the most famous tongue-wagging athlete: Michael Jordan.
“He stuck his tongue out not when he dunked, but when he aimed his hand in preparation for the dunk, just the way the mice did,” Whishaw noted.
Next came a study of professional dart players in England. They, too, stuck out their tongues during a competition.
Chances are, Chiefs fans have at some point noticed Mahomes’ tongue when he throws a pass. Whishaw certainly had, and that’s why the Chiefs quarterback was the next focus of his examination.
“I looked at the videos for him, and the tongue comes out exactly at the same place — not when he throws the ball but when he raises his hand,” Whishaw said. “And it’s as if the tongue is shooting out at the targets, saying here’s the target, and you may go with your hand. And I think that’s what’s going on.”
Whishaw has been studying the “oromanual” region of the cerebral cortex, an area of the brain he believes controls the tongue and hands. He is working with a group from Duke University to map that part of the brain.
The brain can process 11 million bits of information every second, a story on NPR.com said, but “only” 40 to 50 bits of information a second in the conscious mind.
That processing speed is why Mahomes doesn’t bite his tongue while playing, even if it helps with his throws.
“If you look at a pro ... the hand comes up and there’s an instance where it’s still, and then it makes the movement,” Whishaw said. “And it’s that instant when the head is still is when the tongue protrudes and then gets out of the way. So it’s not hard for Patrick Mahomes to do that because his arm is still when he makes that tongue protrusion and then he throws.”
This story was originally published September 5, 2023 at 6:00 AM.
