Kansas City Chiefs starting QB Patrick Mahomes is set to suit up and play against the Chicago Bears during preseason Week 1.
A lot of NFL coaches choose to hold their star players out for the preseason in hopes of avoiding injury. Andy Reid isn’t one of those coaches. He believes that preseason is good for “getting the juices going” and “preparing yourself mentally for the real thing.” His quarterback is a like-minded thinker, but Mahomes might take it to another extreme.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Mahomes explained that he likes to play in the preseason because he likes to get hit, at least once.
“Yeah, I like to get in there and I like to get hit like one time,” Mahomes explained. “Once you get hit one time you kind of see what it is to get hit again as a quarterback. I feel like after that you’re good to go.”
After Mahomes gets hit that one time, he’ll be comfortable going to Coach Reid and telling him, “I’m good, you can pull me from the game now.” It’s all about finding a balance between doing enough to prepare yourself for the regular season and not doing so much that you put yourself at unnecessary risk.
“When you get into the game, it’s different,” Mahomes said. “No matter how hard you practice out here, to have the live things going, have guys flying around your face. You’re going to get hit as a quarterback. I think that’s stuff that you have to make sure you’re ready to go. To be in the game, going through your reads and making the throws to the right spots I think that’s going to be big for everybody.”
What’s most important for Mahomes is that he’s able to get some valuable reps in with his teammates before the games start to count. He needs to make sure he’s on the right page with his skill players because there are a lot of new pieces to this offense this year.
“It will be good to get in there with the new group of receivers that we have, all the running backs and kind of show how we do it in the game,” Mahomes said. “Obviously, we’re doing it here at practice, but to show how we do it in the game before that first game against Arizona, who is a great opponent, I think will be good for us.”
