Patrick Mahomes Is Entering a Stretch That Could Define His Legacy

Patrick Mahomes wasn’t smiling. His Chiefs had just notched a last-second victory on the road, but the best quarterback in football was in no mood to celebrate.

The 30-27 win over the Carolina Panthers on Nov. 24 moved Kansas City to 10-1 after a loss the previous week at Buffalo. Mahomes, as he almost always does, orchestrated a game-winning drive in the final two minutes of regulation, putting the Chiefs in field goal range. After backup kicker Spencer Shrader made a 31-yard field goal as time expired, Mahomes walked off the field with a blank expression on his face.

Inside the visitors’ locker room, Mahomes was uncharacteristically quiet, not as chatty as usual with teammates. Sensing the general malaise among his players, coach Andy Reid delivered an unusual postgame message.

“I don’t want to see anybody hanging their head,” Reid told them with Mahomes a few feet away. “This league is crazy. … Nothing is given to you — and you’re getting their best shot. Keep your heads up, men.

“Winning is the important part.”

Each week of the 2024 campaign seemed to give the most talented quarterback in football a new obstacle to overcome. For the second straight season, Mahomes has done so largely due to his persistence, problem-solving ability and willingness to adjust his playing style to any game’s specific circumstances.

The 29-year-old has continued to perfect the role of “game manager.” The Chiefs’ 15 victories with 30 or fewer points this season are the most in NFL history. They have won 16 consecutive one-score games. Mahomes completed passes to 18 teammates, the most in his career and the most of any quarterback in the league, according to TruMedia. No matter who was in the huddle, the Chiefs converted on 51.5 percent of their late-down snaps (third and fourth down) with him as the starter, the highest rate in the league. Mahomes engineered seven game-winning drives this season and accounted for 72.5 percent of the offense’s yards, the most of any quarterback in the league.

“He continues to change and find different ways to get you,” former NFL quarterback and ESPN analyst Alex Smith said on “SiriusXM NFL Radio.” “That is the mark of an unbelievable quarterback and competitor. I think it actually deserves more credit.

“He doesn’t get enough credit for (being) such a grinder on the little things. He’s so hungry and so unchanged despite all his success. It’s just awesome to watch.”

Mahomes begins what could be a legacy-defining stretch on Saturday when the Chiefs host the Houston Texans — one with the potential to separate himself from legends like Terry Bradshaw, Joe Montana and Tom Brady. And if the last two seasons are any indication, he will do whatever it takes to come out on top.

“I learned a lot about myself last year, just when I felt I wasn’t playing my best and we were kind of struggling throughout the season,” Mahomes said in November. “I learned how to just find ways to win. It helped me grow up, to show that it’s not about stats. It’s not about how you get it done. It’s about getting it done.”

The burden wasn’t supposed to be this heavy. Reid and general manager Brett Veach believed that 2023 would be the most strenuous season of Mahomes’ prime.

His yards per game (261.4), yards per attempt (7) and giveaways (17) were all the worst of his career. The Chiefs’ receivers — Rashee Rice, Kadarius Toney, Marquez Valdes-Scantling, Justin Watson, Skyy Moore and Richie James — dropped 25 catchable passes, the most by any receiver group since the 2012 Jacksonville Jaguars.

In the playoffs, though, Mahomes turned into Superman. He recorded 1,051 passing yards, six touchdowns and one interception in four games, the Chiefs becoming the NFL’s first repeat champion in two decades. According to Aaron Schatz, the chief analytics officer of FTN Network and inventor of DVOA, Kansas City faced the hardest-ever postseason road to a championship based on the regular-season DVOA of their opponents.

In the offseason, the Chiefs tried to make things easier.

Mahomes was allowed inside the Chiefs’ scouting process, leading him to give informed input to help Reid and Veach revamp the offense. The quarterback learned how the front office ranked free agents and draft prospects and what attributes they appreciated about certain players and valued more highly than other franchises.

“He’s someone who has a great eye for talent,” said Veach, who played a prominent role in the Chiefs acquiring Mahomes in the 2017 draft. “He just understands the qualities and characteristics that make people stand out.”

In the spring of 2023, Mahomes invited a small group of receivers less than a month away from being selected in the draft — Rice from SMU, Zay Flowers from Boston College and Quentin Johnston from TCU — to participate in his passing sessions on TCU’s campus in Fort Worth, Texas. Mahomes served as a conductor, creating scenarios in which the pass catchers would run routes against various imaginary zone coverages.

The session was a final piece of the Chiefs’ pre-draft preparations. Rice ran every route that day determined to make Mahomes remember him. Mahomes was impressed, which contributed to Veach’s decision to trade up nine spots in the second round to acquire Rice with the 55th pick.

“Let’s just go up and get our guy,” Veach said in the Chiefs’ draft room that night.

As a rookie, Rice emerged as the Chiefs’ top receiver, recording 79 receptions for 938 yards and seven touchdowns. In the four-game postseason run, Rice produced 26 receptions for 262 yards and a touchdown. “He understood what I was talking about and how I wanted him to run routes and get open within the scheme of the offense,” Mahomes said.

This past spring, Veach gave Mahomes a list of receivers the Chiefs were interested in acquiring via free agency and the draft. When watching film of Marquise Brown, a former first-round pick of the Baltimore Ravens who spent the 2022-23 seasons with the Arizona Cardinals, Mahomes admired his speed, route-running and ability to track the ball on deep routes. In March, the Chiefs signed Brown to a one-year deal.

“(Mahomes) is a film junkie,” Veach said of the quarterback. “There’s mutual respect. He knows how much time our (personnel) guys put into it. It’s almost like a coach. He’ll go through (a receiver’s) entire season of tape.

“There are no shortcuts with him. He does the work.”

Around that same time, Veach let Mahomes see the Chiefs’ entire draft board. Xavier Worthy, a speedy receiver from Texas listed at 5-foot-11 and 165 pounds, ran the 40-yard dash in a record-setting 4.21 seconds at the NFL combine, but Mahomes’ evaluation showed that Worthy was more than a deep threat: “What I liked more than even the speed was how he ran with the ball after the catch,” he said.

When Veach and Reid evaluated Worthy, he reminded them of DeSean Jackson, who played in 15 NFL seasons. Veach made a trade with the Buffalo Bills — the AFC contender the Chiefs have eliminated in the postseason in three of the past four years — to secure Worthy with the 28th pick. Mahomes reacted, posting a smiley face with sunglasses emoji on X. Then he texted Worthy.

“Let’s go!” Mahomes wrote. “Can’t wait to work with you.”

Despite an evolving supporting cast, Mahomes has won 89 of his 112 regular-season starts for the Chiefs. (David Eulitt / Getty Images)

Things didn’t go according to plan.

Rice was arrested on assault charges in April after a high-speed car crash in Dallas the previous month. His availability for the season was an open question leading up to Week 1 when he avoided being placed on the commissioner’s exempt list.

Brown sustained a dislocated collarbone on the opening snap of the preseason, an injury that required surgery and forced him to miss most of the season. In Week 2, running back Isiah Pacheco broke his right fibula, causing him to miss nine games.

Then, against the Chargers in Week 4, Mahomes threw a first-quarter pass too high for tight end Travis Kelce. Los Angeles cornerback Kristian Fulton intercepted the ball, returning it near the Chiefs’ sideline as Rice pursued him. Mahomes attempted to bring Fulton down by crouching down and launching himself sideways at the defender shoulder-first. But Mahomes instead hit Rice’s right knee, bending the receiver’s leg backward. Within minutes, Rice was carted off to the locker room, his hands and a towel covering his face. His season was over.

“You’re just devastated,” passing game coordinator Joe Bleymaier said. “(Rice) was on such a great trajectory. You could sense a special season coming.”

Mahomes found himself playing with a group of skill-position players he couldn’t have anticipated six weeks earlier, including running backs Kareem Hunt and Samaje Perine and receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster, all of whom were added to the roster after training camp. The quarterback was forced to use an ad-hoc lineup while at the same time fighting an internal battle against playing too cautiously.

“There’s some points in games where I know too much,” he said. “You can almost eliminate stuff because you know it’s supposed to be covered. … When I was younger, I would just cut it loose. I would just go through the reads the way the reads are set on the paper, and I would throw the deep shot if it was there.

“There’s times now where I’m like, ‘Well, they’re in this coverage, and that’s not supposed to be there,’ and it is.”

GO DEEPER

Like the Patriots, Chiefs dynasty has left shattered legacies, fractured franchises in its wake

Mahomes made an adjustment after Rice’s injury. He told Worthy he was going to trust him on a deep pass, even if the Chargers lined up in the correct coverage.

“We needed a spark,” Mahomes said.

Sure enough, with Kansas City near midfield and down 10 points, L.A. showed two deep safeties. Mahomes went to Worthy anyway. The rookie sprinted past Fulton and safety Alohi Gilman before catching the ball in the end zone for a 54-yard touchdown, the longest completion of the season. The ball traveled 62.2 yards, the longest completion by air distance of Mahomes’ career.

“It just showed what can be done in the future,” Worthy said. “(Mahomes) knows a lot about me and how I’m going to run my routes and what I’m going to do in certain situations. We just need to get a little bit more chemistry. Once that clicks, it’s going to be good.”

It didn’t always look good. In a Super Bowl rematch against the San Francisco 49ers in Week 7, Mahomes missed Worthy — wide open on a slick post route — for a potential 71-yard touchdown on the first play after halftime. Two plays later, Worthy stumbled and fell just as Mahomes threw him the ball on a corner route. Cornerback Deommodore Lenoir intercepted the pass.

Early in the fourth quarter, Mahomes drove the Chiefs 79 yards on a 13-play touchdown drive that finished with him trucking rookie safety Malik Mustapha at the goal line on a fourth-and-goal snap from the 1. On Kansas City’s next drive, Mahomes converted two third downs on a 12-play, 80-yard scoring drive that iced the game.

“It’s amazing what he’s been doing,” Bleymaier said. “It’s surgical. It’s very tactical. He is utilizing everybody, utilizing their strengths and he’s completing the passes, I think, in a way that really only he can.”

Three days after beating the 49ers, Veach, an executive known for his aggressiveness, acquired former All-Pro receiver DeAndre Hopkins from the Tennessee Titans for a conditional 2025 fifth-round draft pick. In just his second game with Kansas City, the 32-year-old Hopkins helped the Chiefs beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, recording 86 receiving yards and two touchdowns.

Playing in constant rainfall, Mahomes sprained his left ankle when he planted his foot on the slippery turf just before releasing a short touchdown pass to Perine. After the injury, Mahomes’ performance actually improved. He completed 16 of his final 20 passes for 154 yards and a touchdown without committing a turnover or being sacked.

In the immediate aftermath of the Chiefs’ overtime win, Hopkins became emotional during his on-field interview. “Pat and I playing ball …” the receiver said, smiling. “I’m grateful to be here.”

Former All-Pro DeAndre Hopkins (left) proved to be a key midseason acquisition for Kansas City. (Christian Petersen / Getty Images)

Five days after the Chiefs’ underwhelming win in Charlotte, Mahomes was upset again.

He was back on the field, this time at Arrowhead Stadium, yelling a four-letter expletive — “F—! — in the direction of Reid and offensive coordinator Matt Nagy with 10 minutes left against the Las Vegas Raiders. Mahomes had just been hit less than three seconds after the ball was snapped on a pivotal third-and-goal play from the 5-yard line, resulting in a sack by Las Vegas defensive end Maxx Crosby.

“It’s the same (pass-rushing) move!” Mahomes continued to shout.

The Chiefs won, but Mahomes was sacked five times for the second time in five days.

Kansas City’s biggest weakness this season was at left tackle, the lineman most responsible for protecting Mahomes’ blind side. Wanya Morris, the second-year tackle who played through a right knee injury for several games, struggled mightily in pass protection against the Raiders, allowing 11 pressures, the most by a Chiefs left tackle in a game this season. The next week, when veteran left tackle D.J. Humphries made his first start of the season against the Chargers, Mahomes was hit 12 times. Humphries couldn’t finish the game because of a strained left hamstring.

The 102nd hit Mahomes took this season was the most painful: He was hit low and from behind by Browns defensive tackle Dalvin Tomlinson, resulting in a sprained right ankle. After the flight from Cleveland, Mahomes headed to the Chiefs’ training facility for treatment and an initial flexibility assessment. The next day, he stayed at the facility for 12 hours. As he watched himself on film during treatment, he realized he needed to better trust his post-snap progressions and get the ball out of his hands faster.

In the Chiefs’ most difficult stretch of the season — an unprecedented three games in 11 days in December — Mahomes altered his playing style. He was still an effective scrambler at times while playing on the sprained ankle, but he threw the ball more quickly.

Joe Thuney, the All-Pro left guard who switched to left tackle at the start of the truncated stretch, provided suitable protection. Worthy and Hopkins were effective on the perimeter, and Brown excelled in the intermediate area of the field upon his return, which created more space for Kelce.

Mahomes had his best, most gratifying performance of the season in the Christmas Day win over the Pittsburgh Steelers, finishing with 320 yards, three touchdown passes and a classic moment of Mahomesian improv.

While scrambling to his left on a third-and-11 snap in the first quarter, Mahomes saw linebacker Patrick Queen shove Perine to the turf, leaving the veteran rolling on his back. At that precise moment, Mahomes threw a back-handed lob that Perine was able to lunge at and haul in for a 14-yard gain.

“I just knew if I got it high enough, he was just wide open,” Mahomes said. “It was the only chance. It was either that or take the hit.”

After the game, Mahomes and Kelce — each donning an oversized red Santa Claus jacket they received from Netflix after the streaming giant carried its first NFL game — entered the Chiefs’ joyous locker room. Mahomes, who didn’t play in Week 18, finished the season with career lows in passing yards (3,928), passing touchdowns (26) and yards per attempt (6.8).

His Chiefs, two-time defending Super Bowl champions, won the AFC’s No. 1 seed, a first-round bye and home-field advantage throughout the playoffs. And winning is the important part.

(Photo: Jamie Squire / Getty Images)