Patrick Mahomes fires back at Ja’Marr Chase. But it’s never just about the words
Just before noon Thursday, as Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes spoke to the media, he attempted to delve into what might motivate a guy who was just a few hours from receiving a second Super Bowl ring.
Minutes after he’d duck inside Union Station for that celebration, Mahomes would provide a more complete answer than anything he could’ve offered in that news conference.
All of two words.
“That’s who.”
Mahomes is the kind of player who always manages to get the last word, and yet his rivals across the NFL keep speaking up first. It has made for some of the most entertaining moments of the Patrick Mahomes era in Kansas City.
But also some of the most revealing.
Mahomes hears everything, never forgets anything and finds a reason to be slighted by something.
Or someone.
The latest? Earlier this week, when asked to identify the best quarterback in football, Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow replied by naming Patrick Mahomes. “I don’t think there’s any argument,” he said.
Reporters would ask Burrow’s top receiver, Ja’Marr Chase, the same question, and he replied by sticking up for his guy: “Joe Burrow. Everybody knows that.”
Nothing to see there. A reporter, though, informed Chase that Burrow had answered differently.
He said Pat.
Replied Chase: “Pat who?”
And off we go.
It’s actually a pretty funny reply, but if you’ve paid attention these last six years, didn’t you know that would find its way to Mahomes? Sure enough, after slipping on his second Super Bowl ring Thursday night in Kansas City, Mahomes posted a photo with the aforementioned two-word caption.
But it’s not about the words.
It’s not only about the words.
We don’t need to analyze who might have gotten the best of whom in a can-the-season-get-here-already exchange, because that’s missing the point.
Last season, as the Chiefs were heading to Tampa Bay, I wrote about the effects of Shaquil Barrett’s insults to the Chiefs’ offensive line. The Chiefs’ five-man unit responded with a pretty good night, and Mahomes would throw three touchdowns in that game, including perhaps his most ridiculous highlight of the season. “I’m like that,” we now know he said afterward.
Later in the season, Mahomes had not forgotten when “the (Cincinnati) mayor came at me, man.”
These are more than some cute anecdotes. For years, I’ve wondered how much this stuff actually plays into the outcomes of games, because it can seem pretty silly to connect the two, and maybe we only connect the dots in retrospect. Should NFL players really need motivation when they are only provided 17 games per year?
We really don’t have any hard data on it, but when talking to some of those guys in the room, it’s clear they believe there is an effect during the week of preparation as much as the game itself. Those long days can feel a little shorter. It’s a little easier to focus during film work.
A year ago, to try to squeeze some sort of statistics into that equation, I looked into Mahomes’ numbers in revenge games — rematches of games he’d lost — and his numbers were off even his own charts. A higher rate of touchdowns and yards, a better completion percentage and a better record in those games. There seemed to be something to it, even as the sample size grows.
Everyone I talked to about Mahomes last offseason would mention how motivated he appeared to be about the Tyreek Hill talk. And he followed with his second MVP season.
But here is the unique thing about this offseason — excuse me, was the unique thing about this offseason: Mahomes didn’t have much of a reason to feel slighted.
Let’s be real, the Chiefs have stretched those reasons in the past. They are still trying to convince you that nobody in the world thought they could win a Super Bowl last season, even as they opened that season as the third favorites on the Vegas sheet. Yes, some (and only some) thought they could take a step back after losing Tyreek Hill. Very, very few of sound mind thought they’d fall off the face of the earth.
But Mahomes used it. The entire team used it. All season. Some continued to tell the media we said they’d be terrible, or something like that. Because that’s what athletes do. They turn the smallest of things into really big motivational things, so long as it can help get the juices going on a hot July day in training camp.
Chase just got the juices going, and for a team that was going to have to find its own motivation.
Maybe it’s returning the favor. Ahead of a regular season game between the Chiefs and Bengals last winter, Chiefs safety Justin Reid insulted Bengals tight end Hayden Hurst and wide receiver Tee Higgins in the same comment.
A day later, Chiefs head coach Andy Reid said, “I’m not real big on that. He’s new to our team. He’s aware of it now, for sure. He wasn’t before.”
That’s about as much as you’ll ever see Andy Reid criticizing the actions of one of his own players — because he’s adamant that kind of stuff can matter. As players try to one-up each other with words, one of the winningest coaches in NFL history is more concerned it could help determine an actual winner on the field.
And the best example on the Chiefs roster is the quarterback, the guy whom his former offensive coordinator once called a competitive, um, jerk, we’ll call it in print.
The next time the Chiefs are all in one place, that place will be St. Joseph for training camp. This might be an old talking point with us by then. Maybe it won’t matter. But maybe it will.
And that’s the point, right? The Bengals just maybe provided some ammunition the one guy they probably ought to let rest.