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A game with razor-thin margins—the ones Patrick Mahomes was able to create for himself, and his teammates, on the biggest stage, on Super Bowl LVII’s biggest play—is probably why I’m here, in the dog days of training camp, asking a 27-year-old about a potential run at becoming the greatest player ever. Because, if you listen to the folks around him, that play might’ve gone differently with the Mahomes of even just a few years ago.
And if that play had gone differently, there’d be a good chance Mahomes and I are having a totally different conversation on this sweltering morning in St. Joseph, Mo.
You know the situation. Third-and-2, 9:26 left, and the Chiefs clinging to a one-point lead, with the ball on the Eagles’ 4-yard line. If Kansas City settles for a field goal, Philadelphia is in less of a catch-up spot and can manage its next possession judiciously. Score there, and the Eagles are scrambling to respond and get a two-point conversion. Worst case, the Chiefs get the ball back quickly.
But almost right away, there’s a problem. Veteran tight end Travis Kelce is supposed to be lined up on Mahomes’s left, to the side of Skyy Moore, the motion man on the play. The play clock is running. The Chiefs have two timeouts. It’s the sort of spot where K.C. could afford to burn one—and the 23-year-old MVP version of Mahomes might have. Instead, while considering moving Kelce over or calling the timeout, the quarterback calmly peered at the defense. His eyes lit up. His voice raised.
Cover Zero! Cover Zero! Cover Zero!
In that moment, a huge one, Mahomes visualized how the call, modified by misalignment, could still win the play: With the jet motion Moore was coming on, before sprinting back to the corner, sure to cross up Philly CB Avonte Maddox. So the 27-year-old MVP version of Mahomes let the broken play roll.
“That was, to me, Brady-esque,” says one Chiefs staffer. “For him to be able to be in the biggest moment of the season and be O.K. knowing this play is still gonna work because of the coverage they’re in—no need to get Kelce to the other side, no need to call timeout, let’s just let it roll, be calm and make a play—that’s the No. 1 example that comes to mind.”
We know where Mahomes has been, in setting a historic pace through his first six years in the NFL. And, yes, that play helped to keep that pace.
But the play itself also demonstrated where Mahomes sees himself going, and that much was clear Wednesday as he and I dived into what’s next for a quarterback who has seemingly got it all. It showed, in the span of a couple dozen seconds, where he sees his own growth coming, and also where his thirst to learn from the greats that preceded him has taken him. It underscores, too, a pretty scary truth about all he’s accomplished.
He really is just getting started.
Mark J. Rebilas/USA TODAY Sports
We’re a week into our training camp tour now, and we’ve got plenty to dump on you this Monday morning on the site. Here’s what you’ve got coming …
• A look at how Kevin O’Connell has unlocked a more aggressive Kirk Cousins.
• More good signs on where Dan Campbell, Brad Holmes and Jared Goff are taking the Lions.
• Takeaways from across the NFL and the training camp trail.
But let’s start with the defending champs.
At 27 years old, Mahomes has been to five AFC title games and three Super Bowls, and has won two Lombardi Trophies and two MVPs. At the same age, Tom Brady won his third Super Bowl, but hadn’t won an MVP yet, and was two short of Mahomes on conference title game appearances. We all know where Brady took his résumé from there.
But the truth is, that’s really not what the “Brady-esque” reference to the Super Bowl touchdown was about—nor would Mahomes want it to be taken that way.
“I’ve had a great start,” Mahomes tells me. “I’ve been put in a great situation early in my career. Not a lot of guys get to be put in this type of situation. But I have a long ways to go. I know I’m going into Year 7, but Tom did it until he was 45 years old. I’m 27, so I know there’s a long ways to go before I can even be put in that conversation. I just got to continue to work and get better year in and year out.
“If you come back to me in 10 years, I might be able to have this conversation a little bit better with you.”
So what was the Brady reference about?
It wasn’t about where he’s going. It was about how he’ll get there.
Brady’s name was first raised in our conversation by Mahomes, in large part because of how resourceful Mahomes is in trying to stimulate his own growth as a player. The Chiefs signed Blaine Gabbert on April 19. Gabbert was Brady’s backup on the Buccaneers the last three years. Therein, Mahomes saw opportunity.
He saw Gabbert as a connection to Brady, and a way to learn more about the greatest ever, in an effort to improve in the area where he believes he has the most room to grow: “That’s all in the mental side of the game,” he says.
“Talking to Blaine, who’s been with Tom for the last few years now, to see how advanced Tom was, it’s just knowing that I can get there one day. I just got to continue to work and ask Coach [Andy] Reid questions, ask Blaine questions,” Mahomes says. “It just makes the game a lot easier when you can plan, and you know exactly what a defense is gonna do. Every year I come back, I want to take that next step on the mental side of the game.”
And that, not coincidentally, is where Gabbert’s stories about Brady have taken Mahomes.
“He said that he always had an answer,” Mahomes continues. “There’s sometimes, even to this day, you get into a coverage, you just don’t see it. You’re like, I think … maybe. Luckily for me, I’ve been able to scramble and make plays happen. To be able to, presnap, always have an answer and make the game even easier? This is a hard game where defenses are doing a lot of different stuff. You rarely saw Tom get tricked.
“That’s where I want to get to, instead of having to rely on scrambles. That all looks cool, but I want to be able to have the answer even before the snap of the ball.”
Mahomes also knows that, eventually, having those answers is going to be a necessity, not the luxury it would be now, in his 20s.
“No doubt,” he says. “I think you see that out of all the guys. You saw it with Aaron Rodgers in this part of his career. When he was younger, he moved around a lot more and ran and made the throws. Now he has the answers before the snap; he doesn’t have to do that type of stuff. He still has it. Obviously, Tom is the same way. He never was a big scrambler, but even in the later part of his career, he got the ball out even faster, was still able to take the deep shot when it was there.
“At the quarterback position, it’s about evolving as your career goes on. I started off as one player. I feel like I’ve already evolved to another, and I feel like I’m about to keep doing that throughout my career.”
And the subtleties of the touchdown throw to Moore do a nice job of proving it.
Denny Medley/USA Today Sports
For everyone on the outside, the play during the Super Bowl could open a window into Reid’s decision-making, in his allowing Mahomes to take the first two weeks of the offseason program to Texas, with the Chiefs skill players converging on Dallas for an annual passing camp with their quarterback. And why Reid is also now leaning on Mahomes to help develop a receiver group that’ll skew younger this year than it has over the past few years, if things work out as planned.
“He feels that [responsibility],” Reid says. “He’s a great team member and a great leader. He works with these guys with that time that they have for Phase I down in Texas. He gets to know them. Then when he gets up here, he knows what they know and don’t know. He stays on them, which I appreciate.”
It’s been apparent in the meeting room in camp, too—the same place where Reid and coordinator Matt Nagy will hand the reins over to Mahomes, to let him explain what he’s looking for from his receivers, his linemen, his tight ends and backs. In some cases, it’s big-picture stuff. In others, it’s how a receiver should run a particular route, where he wants a tight end lined up or what he might expect in protection.
More often than not, there are extra messages baked in, too. It may be praising a guy for running a route right on the backside of a play (hey, I know you’re gonna be open the next time). It could be saying something nice about a lineman that went unnoticed. At times, it’s Mahomes holding himself accountable when something goes wrong. But in all these situations, coaches know it means more coming from him, which is why they empower him.
“When players hear their peers tell them something, 100 percent,” Reid says. “That’s a positive thing for us.”
And as for feeling that responsibility Reid talked about, just about everyone has seen that from Mahomes this year, with JuJu Smith-Schuster gone; Marquez Valdes-Scantling now being the elder statesmen in the receiver group; and Moore and rookie Rashee Rice, the team’s second-round picks of the past two years, both in position to play high-end roles in the offense.
That responsibility only got bigger when Kadarius Toney went down earlier in camp.
But even in that misfortune, Mahomes saw opportunity.
“It started before OTAs,” he says. “Obviously with Rashee, it started when he got here. We’ve been working. Luckily, he lives in Dallas, so I’m there in the offseason, so we can work there. Guys came down in the offseason. Kadarius was down there. Everybody was down there, so I got to talk them through those extra reps. I got to talk them through how I liked it. I think you get to training camp, and it stinks that he gets injured because you miss those reps. Hopefully, he’ll be back before the season starts.
“But now you can let those other guys get those reps and execute. Another thing is, [Toney is] here. It’s not like it happened in the offseason, and you don’t know what’s going on. He’s rehabbing here. He’s watching the film with us. He’s still in the room. I think it’s always a process. I think a whole entire season, you’re trying to build. You don’t want to be at your best at the very beginning. That’s something we really do here. I’m happy those guys are going to get the reps now, and then when Kadarius gets back in, he’ll be ready to go.”
It’s a good bet that all the Chiefs will be. Because, as was once the case with Brady and his teammates, those who play with Mahomes generally are.
As well-oiled a machine as the Chiefs looked the day I was there—everything looked easy and effortless on the practice field for the 27-year-old—Mahomes didn’t hesitate to pick a little at his own performance during our conversation.
That bullet downfield to Moore? The trick play run to perfection to Valdes-Scantling? The underneath routes to Rice and Kelce? Those didn’t come up.
“I’ve got to make sure I stay on top of the fundamentals,” he says. “I feel like today I got a little loose, and that’s something I have to work on through long, hard days of practice.”
You can translate the nitpicking into this: For Mahomes, every day is about pulling every lever, something that came to life again when I brought up his contract.
On the day of my visit, the ink wasn’t yet dry on Justin Herbert’s five-year, $262.5 million extension, one that has a new-money average of $52.5 million per year. It’s another deal (following those done by Jalen Hurts and Lamar Jackson) that’s raised questions on when Mahomes will rattle cages, with the 10-year extension he signed three summers ago again a topic of debate within the league.
The answer? Well, it seemed to me at least that he looks at his contract as yet another lever he can pull to have the on-field success he aspires to. Of course, he wants his worth. But he also wants to make sure everything’s right around him, and he knows giving the Chiefs cost certainty will help accomplish that, even if there needs to be some adjusting along the way. Which is one more place where he went back to Brady.
“I’ve looked at Tom’s model and how he did it,” Mahomes says. “That’s it—you want to make money for yourself and for your family. You want to keep pushing the market forward for other quarterbacks. You don’t want to be someone that they [use against other players]. But at the same time, I want these other guys to get paid. I want Chris Jones to be in training camp. I want Travis Kelce to always be making money. I want everybody on the team here.
“I have a great offensive line. It’s everything around me. It’s all about having open conversation with [GM] Brett Veach, Coach Reid, [owner] Clark Hunt, and just knowing where that happy medium is. That will be out there throughout my entire career. To me, it’s not always about being the highest-paid. It’s about making enough money for me and my family, and keep moving the game forward for everybody.”
So, essentially, it’s another area where, within reason, Mahomes will position himself to raise a bar that’s already been pushed into the stratosphere.
How high that bar could be raised, over time, remains to be seen. And Mahomes, for his part, wasn’t going to guess on just where he can take all this. But just as clear? He really wants to find out—and he knows there’s only one way to do that.
“Obviously, as a competitor, you want to win as many championships as possible,” he says. “Tom has the ultimate goal, at seven. It’s hard to see seven. You know how hard it is to win championships in this league. But I’ve always said what motivates me is not having regrets. I truly mean that. I know how blessed I am to be on this team with Travis Kelce and with all these receivers and Coach Reid calling plays and all these great coaches.
“I don’t want to look back at the end of my career and say I didn’t give everything I had. I think if I give everything I have, obviously I want to win as many rings as I can, but when I leave my career, if I say I gave everything I had, it won’t matter how many rings. I’ll know that I’d have done everything I could on the football field.”
And if the start of his career is any indication, the rest will probably take care of itself.
