Patrick Mahomes’ 10-year contract is best sports news for any team anywhere recently
Perhaps particularly for those of us of a certain age, 2031 still sounds like the sort of far-flung random year that might have come up in a science fiction book or movie. Akin to, say, George Orwell writing “1984” back in 1949.
By then, though, presumably the COVID-19 pandemic will have run its course … and we’ll have better learned how to contend with the next such threat.
By then, as forecast by FutureTimeline.net, “global reserves of lead are running out” and much of Bangkok is “being abandoned due to flooding” and chocolate will have become “a rare luxury.”
By then, according to Quantumrun.com, another website that explores future trends, “public transit goes bust while planes, trains go driverless” and the “end of permanent physical injuries and disabilities” will be in sight as society faces the choice between playing “God with our human biology or do we become part machine?”
With all due respect to these sites I encountered for the first time Monday afternoon, it’s tricky business predicting the future. Man plans, as the saying goes, and God laughs.
But whatever the world and life holds for us a decade from now, it sure became a decidedly more optimistic prospect around here Monday: The Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes agreed to a 10-year contract extension that stands alone as the richest deal in NFL history.
Mahomes’ contract is a 10-year extension worth $503 million, according to his agents, and he gets $477 million in guarantees — an appropriately stratospheric sum for the increasingly intergalactic star.
Inevitable as it might have been that this would be resolved in the months to come, it seemingly couldn’t have come at a more welcome time for Chiefs fans.
Amid the gloom of the pandemic and the precariousness surrounding even the tentative reopening of sports in the months to come, what fan base in any sport recently has gotten any more uplifting news, any more encouragement about its future, than this development with Mahomes?
Still basking in the afterglow of the franchise’s first Super Bowl appearance and victory in half a century, many fans who only a few years ago perceived the franchise as cursed or otherwise condemned to tortured postseason endings forever already had been reconditioned.
Why, why, why … why can’t we ever have nice things has been eclipsed by the reality that anything is possible with Mahomes, the NFL MVP in his first year as a starter and the Super Bowl MVP in his second with a burgeoning catalog of impossible plays and comebacks.
In fact, his remarkably resilient recovery from an ostensibly devastating knee injury last season to return in weeks and lead the way to the Super Bowl might be seen as a microcosm of how he simply has flipped the entire script here.
Meanwhile, in short time, Mahomes has become not just a generational icon of hope in Kansas City but the face of the NFL.
Which speaks to another element in the beauty of this: Mahomes isn’t just an amazing, transformational player who influences everyone around him on the field. He is a principled, charismatic leader of the highest character in ways that reverberate off the field.
Someone Kansas City can embrace as an ideal ambassador for the city.
This is no small thing at a time we particularly want to know who we can count on as role models … and thus can feel an extra surge of pride to root for.
Those who might fixate on the 24-year-old’s well-deserved but perhaps intemperate celebration during the parade miss the broader point: Mahomes is fundamentally wholesome, charitable, courteous and empathetic, the sort of person who looks people in the eye and really listens and knows part of his role is to make a difference for others.
When I visited his hometown of Whitehouse, Texas, last summer, his longtime personal trainer Bobby Stroupe told me “he’s thoughtful about, ‘What are other people experiencing in this moment that I’m here, and how can I affect that?’ ”
People talked about how he was the guy who always reminded the football coach of teammates’ birthdays and looked out for the “last kids” picked on teams. He was the guy seventh-grade English teacher Dee Landers said “was always good to have ... walk in the room” since he’d smile and make everyone feel part of it all.
Speaking of which, much as that same spirit prevails in the Chiefs’ locker room and all feel drawn toward him, the long-term signing of Mahomes also bolsters another facet of the immediate future of the franchise.
While it’s not yet clear how this mega-signing might affect the murky contractual future of star defensive tackle Chris Jones as he seeks a monster deal of his own, Mahomes has invigorated coach Andy Reid and the franchise itself.
To wit, after the defensive meltdown in the 37-31 overtime loss to New England that ended the 2018 season, general manager Brett Veach deftly overhauled the defense with a change of coordinators, scheme and a LOT of personnel.
Whether it ever was directly stated as such or not, the bold changes were undertaken to ensure that Mahomes’ career wouldn’t be squandered as some novelty act with lofty stats but little in the way of championship legacy.
Speaking of which …
Coming off his long-awaited first Super Bowl crown, with a quarterback of superlative skills and with whom he has a certain extra-sensory connection, at 62 has every reason to want to coach as deep into Mahomes’ contract as he can.
One glance: When he was asked the Monday after the Super Bowl about the play inspired by tape from the 1948 Rose Bowl, Reid smiled and said, “We actually have a whole package of it, so you’ll have to wait until next year to see the rest.”
And, it seems, the next year and the next year and the next year. And so on ... into an otherwise hazy future that at least has this going for it.
This story was originally published July 6, 2020 at 4:33 PM.