Those of a certain age will remember the ever-unfazed Alfred E. Neuman, the Mad magazine mascot best-known for the “what, me worry?” slogan.

More recently in the theater of the unflappable, there’s Pete Davidson’s “Chad” character on Saturday Night Live, described by the Daily Mail as “a happy-go-lucky kid who always finds himself in extreme and scary situations, yet somehow manages to emerge unscathed with a simple ‘OK’ and a shrug of his shoulders.”

And then we come to real-life and Patrick Mahomes, whose considerable gifts include a certain abiding serenity when it comes to stress management and focus.

Beyond the arm, beyond the sheer savvy and imagination on the field, his ability to compartmentalize what might otherwise be crushing expectations, as well as the flourishing mania over him, is another crucial element that sets him apart.

Well, that and the intense desire to sleep like “a sloth,” as his longtime personal trainer, Bobby Stroupe, once told me by way of explaining one of Mahomes’ underrated superpowers.

“I mean, how much anxiety do you sense from Patrick?” said Stroupe, founder and president of the Athlete Performance Enhancement Center with whom Mahomes has worked since fourth grade.

Well, none, I told him.

Not that he’s oblivious or unemotional. To the contrary on both, as we’ll surely see yet again when the Chiefs open the playoffs.

You can witness the energy and fire every time he plays. And the constant uncanny sense of where he is.

“He’s a guy who is extremely aware. Of everything,” Chiefs general manager Brett Veach once said. “He’s aware of how hard you have to work to be successful. He’s aware of how much time you’ve got to put in the film room. He’s aware of how important it is to study. He’s aware about how you carry yourself and conduct yourself. He doesn’t miss anything.”

But he’s also keenly aware of how best to maximize his field of vision, as much off the field as on the field. That form of mental toughness is a bit like pruning leads to growth. In his case, it seems to lop off impediments and impairments.

The reason no moment seems too big for him is because he has conjured a mentality that won’t allow him to be distracted or overwhelmed, particularly by any fear of failure.

By now, the mechanisms have been hard-wired into him through his own unique childhood experiences to college stardom to NFL MVP and Super Bowl MVP … all before he turned 25 years old a few months ago.

From a sports psychology standpoint, the result is what Richard Keefe, the former director of sports psychology at Duke University, told me for a different column last week: “You know his psychology has to be, ‘I can do this. Where is it? Where’s the lock that fits this key? Because I have a key.’ ”

Since we have no way of seeing any aspects of his internal monologue, it’s hard to envision the various mental filters and funnels he deploys to divert or fend off the potential diversions, clutter and creep of expectations heaped on by others.

Still, we can have a sense of at least part of how he goes about it.

Consider his pre-game routine: listening to music, visualizing what’s ahead and taking such actions as gradually loosening up to simply throw the ball as far as he can. It’s all, Stroupe said during that visit to his Texas home in 2019, to “get him into what we would call a flow state, to where his body is in less of a conscious-type mode and more of an unconscious, parallel-type universe.”

Meanwhile, he creates his own sense of flow off the field, too, another tributary to his work.

He offered a glimpse of the way when I asked him last week about how he processes what he takes in as one who is active on social media.

“I try to stay away from looking at the comments and stay away from messages that people send me,” he said. “Just because, one, … you want to stay away from the negative stuff that people send. And then, two, you want to make sure that your mind’s right and that you don’t let that affect how you perform on the field.”

He later added, “I just usually try to stay away from looking too deep into the things and just (be) around the people that I know and the people that really are sending positive vibes my way.”

He cultivates that further by keeping his social circle tight, particularly during the COVID times as he typically only is around his fiancee, Brittany Matthews, and his brother, Jackson. Many of his best friends remain people with whom he grew up, a notion amplified in the 2019 visit I made to Mahomes’ hometown of Whitehouse, Texas.

“Patrick’s always figured out what he wanted,” said Chad Parker, Mahomes’ first coach (in baseball) and whose son, Jake, Mahomes has called his best friend. “And he never let anything, I mean anything, whether it be his free time, his relationships or anything else, get in the way of where he was headed.”

Or as Stroupe put it at the time: “He doesn’t let the world influence him; he decides his circle of influence, and that’s kind of it. And I think that’s something special, too.”

And something you could see with clarity as early on as his third NFL start (and second as the full-time starter after Alex Smith was traded) when he threw six touchdown passes at Pittsburgh.

In a Heinz Field corridor outside the Chiefs locker room that day, Mahomes’ father, Pat, a long-time major-league pitcher, made an oft-repeated point: He believes much of his son’s ability to calm himself to perform came from being around big-time sports since he was a child.

So playing in the NFL, he said, “without a doubt” didn’t faze him any more than playing in high school did.

The insanity over Mahomes was only beginning then, of course. It built throughout that season as he breathed new life into a franchise that hadn’t been to a Super Bowl since 1970, and it came to a crescendo with the triumph a season later.

But with that no doubt came even more heightened expectations.

Nevermind, though, that he’s become perhaps the face of Kansas City and the sort of presence that might cause hysteria when he makes public appearances.

In these pandemic days, he’s more apt to stay in his home and play UNO with Brittany and Jackson than to venture out much.

When he does go out in ordinary times, he can typically count on people here not interrupting a dinner. Afterward, he’s happy to pose for a picture or sign autographs.

“Because you were that kid,” he said. “That’s stuff that’s part of it. You want to make people’s lives happy and give them that moment.”

As for giving them the moments they’ll cherish on the field, Mahomes knows he needn’t concern himself with meeting expectations of others … because he has lofty ones of his own.

“I want to win Super Bowls every single year; I want to be at the top of the game; I want to do whatever I can to win,” he said. “And I think if you keep those things at the front of your mind and you don’t accept average, you don’t accept (not) having your best effort every single day, I think all the (outside) expectations are just stuff that are just there.”

So, what … Mahomes worry?

Not when by all appearances he can just say “OK,” shrug his shoulders and stay true to himself, and on point.

Mahomes Fan Guide

A Patrick Mahomes story and the Chiefs vying for NFL’s first repeat champs in 16 years

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