On the mindset behind Patrick Mahomes announcing that 20-0 is Kansas City Chiefs’ goal
As audacious declarations go, this one was no threat to eclipse, say, Joe Namath’s guarantee that his upstart New York Jets of the AFL would beat the NFL’s Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III in 1969.
Indeed, when Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes said earlier this summer that the only record he has his eyes on this season “is going 20-0,” it clearly was more an aspiration than a vow, more of a goal than a promise.
And it was a refreshing reminder of poet Robert Browning’s proposition that “a man’s reach should exceed his grasp or what’s a heaven for?” Mahomes is all about breaking barriers, in so many ways, and why shouldn’t he be thinking just that way?
Still, it might be wondered why he would announce any such semi-provocative thought with the Chiefs already having transformed themselves from a perpetual hunter to the perennial hunted after five straight AFC West titles, three straight AFC Championship Game appearances and back-to-back Super Bowl berths.
Even after their bid for a second straight NFL title was jackhammered into smithereens by Tampa Bay in Super Bowl LV, the Chiefs are the odds-on favorites to win it all again and thus already will provoke all the chippy and resentful motivation of opponents conferred by that hype.
For that matter, Mahomes sets himself up to take plenty of guff if the Chiefs lose a game (or two) early with a salty opening schedule (Cleveland at home, Baltimore on the road) and a rebuilt offensive line in front of him.
So why would he further incite the looming challengers?
Sure, it’s partly because of his boundless competitiveness, the hard-wired stuff that might compel him to count to 10 on his fingers over a perceived slight by the Chicago Bears. No one, coach Andy Reid says, wants (maybe even needs) fresh challenges more than Mahomes.
But more to the point, the message he was sending wasn’t to the NFL … even if he did say the quiet part out loud.
The target audience was his team, to galvanize and catalyze it out of any temptation towards complacency. And safe to say he has come to have some currency and credibility within the ranks.
“I just feel like if our quarterback says it, we’ve all got to believe in it,” receiver Tyreek Hill said, all but shrugging and later adding, “Pat is our leader. So if he believes that we can go 20-0, we can.”
More than merely opening up imaginations, though, the idea was to demand a different sort of mentality than the one that he felt prevailed through last season even as the Chiefs were going 14-1 in the regular-season games he started (and 14-2 overall after Mahomes and other key players sat out the finale against the Chargers).
Eight of those victories, after all, were by six points or fewer. And while a case can be made that demonstrated the desirable trait of being able to win tight games, Mahomes also thinks it said something else.
“Last year, I felt like every game that we played, it was like, ‘Man let’s just get through this and win this game so we can get to the Super Bowl and you can have another chance to win it,’” he said in an interview with The Star during training camp in St. Joseph.
Losing the Super Bowl the way they did, a 31-9 smothering that left general manager Brett Veach with a “sick feeling” that they were suddenly the worst team in the league, made Mahomes feel that there needed to be an attitude adjustment to what he called “a better mindset.”
To be more accountable to each other. To win every day and leave nothing to chance. To add urgency.
So that when they return to the Super Bowl, he said, they’re “not just the team that’s trying to make our way there.”
Perhaps paradoxically, that means it’s a lot less about the broader statement than each and every step to get there.
Like in “Forever Young” by Bob Dylan:
“May you build a ladder to the stars
“And climb on every rung.”
Emphasis on every rung.
Or as offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy put it: “We want to make sure we fall short by falling short to the moon. So if we want to reach for the stars, let’s go to the moon. Let’s make sure we’re doing everything under the sun.”
To put it all in more terrestrial and practical terms, Bieniemy said, “If our guys are not striving to be at their best, then there’s a problem.”
So Bieniemy applauds what Mahomes said, or at least says he has no problem with it.
For his part, and in keeping with his understated demeanor, Reid downplayed but didn’t dismiss the notion after Mahomes introduced the idea at his charity golf event in Hawaii.
“He wasn’t boasting about it. That’s not what he was doing,” Reid said earlier this summer. “He just said that would be a great challenge; it would be: We’ve got a pretty stiff schedule and some great competition we’re going to play against.
“I felt like he was really saying, ‘Listen, we all need to get busy and work our tail(s) off.’ ”
So much so that he seemed eager to say it. Mahomes leaned right into the answer when asked by Travis Kelce’s girlfriend, Kayla Nicole (on behalf of Coors Light and Bleacher Report), “Are there any records that you have your eyes set on breaking?”
That would be a first, of course, because this is the first year in which the NFl has expanded to a 17-game regular season.
But making good on a quest for perfection has happened only once in NFL history, back in the yesteryear of the 14-game regular season, when the 1972 Miami Dolphins went 17-0.
In the 2007 season, the Patriots won their first 18 games before falling 17-14 to the New York Giants (with current Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo guiding the defense).
So chances are that the Chiefs won’t go 20-0, especially when they figure to take at least a few weeks to develop cohesion in an entirely new offensive line likely to feature three rookie starters.
But Reid also was right when he recently said, “Every season has its own story.”
And sparked by the dud ending last season, this story at least starts with this gambit from Mahomes —one the Chiefs can embrace not just in itself but for the more salient point of how that reach for the stars will set their trajectory.
“There’s a reason why it’s never happened; that’s because it’s danged near impossible,” general manager Brett Veach said. “But to strive for perfection is something that’s at the forefront of every great competitor’s mind. And Pat’s at the top of that list.”