From debut to lefty pass to knee injury, Denver has been crucial crucible for Mahomes
Like about any compelling origin story, the tale of Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ rise is one of numerous circumstances and stages: from the meeting of his parents to his upbringing in Texas; from his innate gifts to his father’s pro baseball background; from the substantial lifelong relationships he made in high school, most visibly with fiancee Brittany Matthews, to his career at Texas Tech.
And many mileposts before and since.
Among those are one particular portal, or even a proving ground — Empower Field at Mile High, where the Chiefs (5-1) on Sunday will seek to beat the Broncos (2-3) for a 10th straight time on any turf.
Even excluding the 23-3 win over Denver at Arrowhead last season, when Mahomes proclaimed he might be “a snow guy,” a trait that forecasts indicate could be needed Sunday, Mahomes’ previous starts in Denver have proven momentous one way or another.
Each has been an essential building block to how we got here today.
In the moments themselves, yes, but also in broader implications that serve as a microcosm of Mahomes’ career trajectory.
Along the way to a 30-6 victory last season, you may recall, Mahomes lay crumpled on the field with a knee injury that appeared potentially catastrophic — enough so that repulsed receiver Tyreek Hill spun away from the sight and tight end Travis Kelce said “didn’t look like a knee.”
Instead of being out for the season or realizing some further sum of all fears well-earned over time by Chiefs fans, though, Mahomes declined to so much as be carted off the field after Dr. Paul Schroeppel performed a reduction of the dislocated patella (yep, snapped his kneecap back in place).
“I’m sure it was a shock to him: You look down and your kneecap is on the other side of your knee where it’s not supposed to be,” coach Andy Reid said Friday, smiling and adding, “He wanted to get back in after about couple of minutes, so he’s wired a little bit different (from others) that way.”
Indeed, he missed all of two games from what he now casually shrugs off as “that game where I got hurt.”
In a bigger-picture sense, that pivotal juncture set a comeback template that would reverberate through the team in a postseason defined by three rallies from double-digit deficits to win the franchise’s first Super Bowl in 50 years.
In fact, with Mahomes, the Chiefs had been 6-0 when trailing by 10 points or more until their recent loss to the Las Vegas Raiders.
(Which is why when they scored to close the gap to 40-32 with 3 minutes 57 seconds left perhaps you were intrigued by what could take place if they had been able to get the ball back.)
As it happens, the groundbreaking for those comebacks in the Mahomes era had been in 2018 in Denver, when the Chiefs stormed back to win 27-23 after lagging by 10 points in the fourth quarter.
That was nicely accented by the 192 yards Mahomes threw for from outside the pocket, including the jaw-slacking, norm-defying and imagination-triggering left-handed pass he threw to Tyreek Hill.
As colleague Sam Mellinger alertly discovered after the game, the scene in an angry and flustered Broncos locker room that night anticipated much of what has come since:
“Everybody should get used to seeing him make plays like that,” then-Broncos linebacker Shane Ray (Bishop Miege, Mizzou) said.
Meanwhile, the gateway to it all took place in 2017. That’s when Mahomes made his first career start in Week 17 as the Chiefs rested Alex Smith and many other starters to prepare for that postseason.
In hindsight, considering Smith’s contract and Mahomes’ promising talent, it already likely was inevitable that the Chiefs would trade Smith in the offseason after a season spent mentoring Mahomes.
Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered if the Chiefs had advanced deep into the playoffs instead of suffering another brutal postseason flameout, this time blowing a 21-3 lead in a 22-21 loss to Tennessee.
General manager Brett Veach has said that what happened that day merely reaffirmed their inclination to move Smith and promote Mahomes the next season. But even he wondered if there might be a “deer in the headlights” phase.
And this also was before anyone, especially in the general public, could really know Mahomes if was a revelation instead of a mirage.
Plenty of big-armed quarterbacks have been duds, after all. And the transition and translation of his game from Texas Tech to the NFL was no certainty beyond perhaps Veach, who saw something in him that not all others did and helped spur the Chiefs to draft him No. 10 overall.
Consider, too, that Reid still says the organization “didn’t know exactly what direction we were going at that time.”
And that Mahomes on Wednesday explained why that game was a fundamental part of his development and future.
“That first start, it was a crazy one,” he said. “First off, it was extremely cold. It felt like it was like zero degrees outside, so first time playing in that type of weather.”
Moreover …
“I mean, that whole year I had been on the scout team, kind of doing my thing, trying to make myself better,” he said. “But I didn’t exactly know how that had helped and all that work I had put in, if it had really paid off.”
Turned out it had, even if it was more raw preview than instant classic. Mahomes completed 22 of 35 passes for 284 yards with an interception and no touchdown passes.
But he enjoyed some signature moments, including coming off the bench after the victory had seemed sealed to guide the Chiefs to the game-winning field goal highlighted by, you know, that pass to Demarcus Robinson.
That play doesn’t look gaudy in the box score, good for 12 yards on a first and 10 from the Chiefs’ 32-yard-line. But completing the pass on the dead run … against the grain … off his back foot … through a thicket of defenders was a telling snapshot of what his mad-libbing might mean at this level.
The game “really stamped that all that work I was putting in was paying off, and so it was an exciting feeling,” Mahomes said Wednesday. “The (Robinson) pass, it seems like that stuff just continued on.”
If Reid hadn’t been sure what Mahomes’ timetable was going to be entering that game, he radiated some hints afterward. While he joked (we think) then that Mahomes “ruined a couple” of great play calls with his improvising, he gushed about how he dealt with blitzes and verbiage and made throws “not many people can make.”
But nothing resonated more than when Reid said the 22-year-old running a profoundly sophisticated offense “had complete command out there.”
Suddenly, the future was imminent.
The next season, Mahomes was the NFL MVP en route to becoming a Super Bowl MVP last season. Today he’s still maturing and improving even as his numbers may be less striking with a more dynamic run game and as defenses adjust to him.
“It’s about being patient now,” Mahomes said. “Being patient with the run game, being patient with the short passing game and keep taking what is there.”
And until proven otherwise, taking what’s there includes beating the Broncos, who not long ago were the Chiefs’ nemesis.
Now they are 0-5 in games Mahomes has started and, since the beginning and along the way, a prominent part of his origin story.