How is Patrick Mahomes handling the burden of so much Chiefs hope? His dad explains
The misses and failures of a franchise’s last 50 years are his to fix, ridiculous as that is. Patrick Mahomes is 24 years old. He would never rent a car, because an arm like that deserves a driver, but if he did he’d have to pay extra.
Mahomes was in college when the official called forward progress, in high school for 38-10, in grade school when the Chiefs lost without punting. His own father wasn’t born the last time the Chiefs won a Super Bowl, so we can all agree that the premise that Patrick Mahomes II has to fix this is absurd. But it’s also reality.
Two of the Chiefs’ three AFC Championship Game appearances since the merger have come in the last two seasons, because Mahomes.
The Chiefs are in this game after turning a 24-point deficit into a 20-point win, because Mahomes.
The Chiefs are the betting favorite to win the Super Bowl, because Mahomes.
The Chiefs have a real chance to be something like the next decade’s New England Patriots — a previously underachieving franchise lifted to new heights — because Mahomes.
To hold up his end of it all, he has to do is be what this franchise hasn’t had in a half-century, maybe more, and cover mistakes with playmaking and doubt with confidence.
And, really, the crazy part isn’t that he’s here. Others have shouldered similar burdens.
The crazy part is that Mahomes appears not just up to the challenge, but unaffected by its intensity.
“It’s rare,” Chiefs coach Andy Reid said.
When the subject of Mahomes’ cool and leadership arises, Reid and others often bring up Mahomes’ childhood, when he spent chunks of his summers in big-league clubhouses with his father, who pitched 11 seasons for six major-league teams.
And certainly that’s part of it. When he was still so young — Pat retired when Patrick was 12 — Mahomes had something like a masters class in how professional athletes should work. He saw what earned respect, and what didn’t.
But that story has been told, and as it turns out it’s not the full story. Seeing pro baseball players up close as a kid does not explain how the 10th-youngest guy on the Chiefs’ roster can galvanize older men on the sideline and then back it up with a historic comeback on the field.
“I don’t know if you can teach that part of it,” Reid said. “You can teach the fundamentals, and those things, but then they put their own personalities on it. You want to make sure that takes place, and he’s done that.”
Three years ago, when Mahomes first considered leaving Texas Tech after his junior year for the NFL, there were no doubts about his ability. Or his mind. Or his focus.
So when he first discussed the idea with the people who love him most, LaTroy Hawkins — one of Pat’s best friends, Patrick’s godfather and another former major-leaguer — asked the first question.
“Are you ready to lead grown men?” Hawkins said.
“Yes,” Mahomes answered.
Patrick was just 21 at the time but had a way of making the grown men across the table from him believe his sincerity. Patrick grew up with a deep support system — two loving parents, Hawkins, caring coaches and strong and sports-obsessed friends.
But there’s more to it than that, and when asked this week Pat Sr. told a story that he hadn’t shared publicly before. After he retired from baseball, he played in basketball tournaments around the country. They played against former pros, some former college players, that kind of thing. Good ball. Stacked team.
Patrick suited up. This was seventh and eighth grade, and when his dad’s team went up by enough, the kid came in, a middle-schooler playing against grown men.
“Guys, at the beginning, they’d slack off him thinking he wouldn’t be able to keep up,” Pat said. “But once he hits three or four shots they play him like everybody else.”
You begin piecing these things together and it starts to look like Patrick had lifelong preparation for moments like this.
Mahomes is not some robot. He is not impervious to the moment, or the stakes. His celebrations after touchdowns against the Texans covered half the field, and in them Pat saw at least two truths — he’s never seen his son more excited, and he thinks the show was done at least in part to maximize noise from the home crowd.
Emotion, but also purpose.
Mahomes has been asked about all of this, of course. He was asked by teams about it during preparation for the 2017 NFL Draft, queried by reporters about it before his first start, and he has been asked about it repeatedly ever since.
He spent his first year in Kansas City earning the right to have a voice, by staying quiet, working early and late, supporting starter Alex Smith where he could.
He has spent the last two years treating that voice like a responsibility, not just in giving fiery speeches like the one he shared with teammates on the sideline of last Sunday’s playoff game, but in being plain-spoken when those teammates aren’t competing up to his high standards, and by taking blame even when the mistake isn’t his and giving credit when he doesn’t need to.
Happened again this week, actually, when someone asked about the burden he carries to lead from the front.
“The best thing about this team is that everybody does that,” he said. “If someone is not having the best day, we pick each other up and go out there and feed off each other’s energy.”
That’s Mahomes, trying to make you believe he plays on a team full of Mahomeses. It’s a lie, of course.
But it’s the lie a lifetime of preparation for this specific moment has taught him needs to be told, because, who knows, maybe the grown men he’s leading will believe it.