Patrick Mahomes is still sore, still swollen, injured left ankle wrapped tightly with athletic tape.
It’s early November, the day after Election Day. The Kansas City Chiefs hold perhaps the shakiest 8–0 record in NFL history and now, after Mahomes needed help getting off the field late in a Monday night win over the Buccaneers, they’re dealing with another round of Ankle Watch for their superstar QB.
Only the presidential race generates more headlines. Otherwise, it’s all Patrick-Patrick-Patrick. One outlet details a favorite ritual—Mahomes sharing a brief kiss with his wife before games. Another describes his fifth annual charity gala and its community impact. Another openly wonders if Taylor Swift, notable Chiefs fan, had snubbed the Kamala Harris campaign to be at a game. Another describes Mahomes’s 3-year-old daughter, Sterling, and her charming description of defenders: “So
One headline has Mahomes as being “so back.”
Another notes his “fall” out of the MVP race.
Patrick Mahomes is a proxy for America and its favorite sport. All season, debates have raged around him: his mom’s politics, his wife’s politics, even his politics, the gist of which Mahomes has never publicly revealed. His father was sentenced—10 days in jail, five years’ probation—for driving under the influence of alcohol last February. His mother pleaded for prayers for her father, who had fallen ill and been hospitalized.
And in early November, Mahomes is not playing his best football—not per sources but per . He is in the middle of the pack among NFL quarterbacks in passing yards and touchdowns. Through eight games, he’s thrown nine interceptions.
The Buffalo Bills would eventually hand the Chiefs a loss in Week 11, but at this point Patrick Mahomes is still undefeated. Including the playoffs and Super Bowl, Kansas City closed out last season with six consecutive victories. He had never won 14 straight games before, Mahomes reveals, at any level of football, and perhaps in any sport he played. Maybe basketball. Maybe baseball. Maybe not. There’s an asterisk on the streak, though—for the first 13 wins, the Chiefs never surpassed 28 points. No franchise had ever won that many consecutive games and scored so few points in each.
Still, let’s not forget, Mahomes is the single best player in professional football. The Kingdom knows this, regardless of how this odd, injury-heavy, bad luck 2024 season has unspooled. He’s still Patrick F—ing Mahomes, right? Thrower of touchdowns. Consumer of Whataburger. Winner of Super Bowls. Devoted dad. Destroyer of souls.
There’s more interest in Mahomes and the Chiefs than there is in any other player or any other team in North America. More than 20 million viewers recorded for K.C.’s victory over Tampa Bay earlier that week, touts a news release from ESPN.
On this Wednesday, Patrick Mahomes is behind a lectern, addressing local media, when one reporter uses the phrase “regular Sunday.” Mahomes lost those years ago, soon after embarking upon an unprecedented start to an NFL career. Normal ceased for Mahomes as soon as he became the most abnormal quarterback in league history.
Did it? Because those who know Mahomes best cannot stop using that word: . From his physique (proud dad bod) to his celebratory drink of choice (Coors Light cans) to his favorite snack (Cool Ranch Doritos) to his hobbies (watching sports), there’s little beyond the headlines that paints his day-to-day existence as tied, in any way, to celebrity.
To be sure, there are always headlines. It’s like Mahomes became a member of the British royal family as his career shot skyward. There’s endless scrutiny of his left ankle. Right ankle. Injured receivers. His new target, wideout DeAndre Hopkins, acquired in late October. Injured running backs—and another, Kareem Hunt, who returned six years after he was banished by the Chiefs in disgrace.
Mahomes is the biggest name in the country’s biggest sport, but that’s not how he sees himself. Nor is it how anyone else within his orbit sees him. His normal, Mahomes says in a quiet moment in early November, “is just being yourself. People can see when you’re true and not trying to put on a persona.”
Healthy response. So healthy it cannot possibly be true. But it is, Mahomes insists, pointing to when this mindset started taking shape—during a childhood spent inside Major League Baseball clubhouses. He often tagged along with his father, Patrick Mahomes Sr., who pitched professionally for 11 seasons. In this conversation, his son diverges from more typical responses, all the how-to-succeed elements of a childhood spent around pro athletes. He also learned what not to do from them.
“I grew up in the locker room,” he says. “And I remember—I’m not naming names—seeing a lot of superstars. Some, just, normal guys who loved to be [there], loved to watch sports. Some that, like … it was hard to approach them.”
He cannot recall the exact year, but somewhere in that 6-7-8-years-old range, young Patrick Mahomes made two promises to himself. He will become a professional athlete, just like them. But, when he makes it, he won’t be an a–hole. “I wanted to make sure that kids or anybody could come up to me and talk to me,” he says.
How Mahomes remains so normal for someone with his level of fame and accomplishment starts with those promises. What comes next: that box, the one that he exists in.
Same day. Same place. Chiefs coach Andy Reid settles behind the mic. Outside, sun beams down on the franchise once known for bad luck. Reid’s mustache is in midseason form. His offense, 8–0 record notwithstanding, is lost somewhere in the early-installs stage. He grips the lectern’s sides like he’ll never let go, knuckles turning white.
Been that kind of year, unlike any of the ones before it. The Chiefs keep winning, now 12–1 after another close call against the Los Angeles Chargers on . But each victory, it seems, only raises more questions, more uncertainty, until Reid’s purpose in public appearances becomes noting that ugly wins, each more fizzle than sizzle, still, you know, count. One year when the Patriots were 8–0, Tom Brady described himself as “miserable.” Not these Chiefs.
If they can secure a championship three-peat this season, nobody’s going to mention any score beyond the Super Bowl, anyway. That’s where they’re pointed. And that push had started with so much promise. On the eve of last February’s Super Bowl, general manager Brett Veach told he wasn’t optimistic about keeping his best defensive player, scheme-obliterating tackle Chris Jones.
At the start of the 2023 season, what Kansas City wanted to pay and what it would have to pay for an extension for Jones weren’t in the same galaxy. Other roster movements had closed that gap, naturally but not entirely. Veach soon met with franchise CEO Clark Hunt. “It’s important to keep Chris Jones here,” Veach told his owner. “Can you enable us to close the gap?”
Keeping Jones required paying a higher premium.
“Do it,” Hunt responded.
The sides hashed out an extension (five years, $101 million guaranteed). “Credit to Clark,” Veach says.
To help clear money for Jones, Veach dealt cornerback L’Jarius Sneed to the Titans. Small price, considering. The GM addressed most other needs in the draft, adding speedy wideout Xavier Worthy and offensive tackle Kingsley Suamataia in the first two rounds. Veach sought cornerback depth from the fourth round onward. But the board never matched available talent with Kansas City’s prospect evaluations.
Oh, well. Even the NFL’s latest dynasty can’t have everything.
Plus, Veach already had Mahomes, who just turned 29 in September, but is already a two-time league MVP, three-time champion and three-time Super Bowl MVP. Veach had fallen for Mahomes when he was playing at Texas Tech; he had fallen especially hard for the uncommon physical gifts the quarterback possessed. Passes departing like rockets shot from launchpads. Spatial awareness that couldn’t be taught. Yards and touchdowns amassed as if playing real-life video games. Mahomes, at his essence, did things that defied physics, imagination, belief. Veach projected all and saw not what Mahomes was but what he could become—one of the best players in history.
The Chiefs traded up and drafted Mahomes with the 10th pick in 2017, then started creating an incubator designed for growth. Reid was the anchor of the infrastructure Kansas City put in place. He taught Mahomes offensive football. Quarterback Alex Smith provided early mentorship and a blueprint for approach. The training staff kept Mahomes healthy.
The box—his word—that insulates and protects Patrick Mahomes was beginning to take shape.
Mahomes’s natural bearing and intentional approach bled into the locker room. Full breaks from football ensured he could indulge his obsession with studying the game, meticulously gleaning insights from every season. The incubator produced intended growth. The national spotlight grew but somehow Kansas City, the actual city, limited its glare—it was the kind of place conducive to the normal-guy lifestyle Mahomes craved. His personal coaches enhanced individual skills. His football team enhanced how he deployed them.
Together, quarterback and franchise became the most adaptable team in football. Injuries could strike right before the playoffs (2022). Roster churn could threaten to unravel momentum (’23). The offense could sputter and stall (’24). Nothing mattered, beyond the baseline and what it fashioned: the NFL’s most dominant most regenerative team.
