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Peter King with Mahomes and his dad

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https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2018/09/17/patrick-mahomes-chiefs-nfl-week-2-fmia-peter-king/?cid=nbcsports#the-lead-mahomes

Before the Chiefs and Steelers met Sunday at Heinz Field, Pat Mahomes the dad met Patrick Mahomesthe son for their traditional pre-game hug. Pat Mahomes the retired baseball pitcher and Patrick Mahomes (yes, “Patrick;” his mom has decreed the son will be called a different name than the father) the young Chiefs quarterback have been doing this since seventh grade. If dad is at the game, he’s hugging his son and saying the same thing on this breezy 80-degree afternoon at one of the coolest places to play pro football—the confluence of the Three Rivers—that he’s said before youth, high school and college football games.

“Players make plays,” Pat Mahomes said to his son. “Go out there and have fun.”

Pat Mahomes’ 11-year major-league career ended just down the street 15 years earlier—his last MLB stop was with the Pirates in 2003—but he wasn’t thinking much about that sitting in his normal-fan end-zone seat Sunday. Mostly, he was thinking about the eerie calm of his son.

“It’s just crazy,” said Pat Mahomes late Sunday night after his flight home to Texas landed in Dallas. “Watching him, he’s so calm. The thing that’s funny to me is he really doesn’t realize what he just did. He went into Pittsburgh, where they’ve won more Super Bowls than any team in history, and he won. He really doesn’t think about that stuff. He doesn’t think about being in Heinz Field playing Roethlisberger. He just goes and plays football.”

The Lead: Mahomes

Players make plays. Patrick Mahomes leads the NFL in making them. He’s quickly becoming the big story of this NFL season. In the Chiefs’ 42-37 win over the Steelers—the first win for Kansas City in Pittsburgh since 1986—Mahomes threw six touchdown passes and no interceptions. Watching a good portion of it on CBS, I’m surprised Ian Eagle finished the game with a voice. What Mahomes is doing has never been done. No player, never mind a player in his second and third NFL starts, has opened a season with a 10-to-0 touchdown-to-interception ratio in two games. Now, it’s only an eighth of the season, but Mahomes has gone on the road twice, played playoff contenders with Hall of Fame-contender quarterbacks (Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger), gone 2-0, put up 80 points, and thrown touchdown passes to four wideouts, a tight end, a running back and a fullback.

It’s not just the raw numbers. It’s the way he’s done it. Watch Mahomes play, and you see an eight-year vet, or someone who plays like one. No happy feet, no real highs of emotion, calm in the pocket even when there’s traffic. He’s in such a perfect system, with speedy and talented wideouts, the defending NFL rushing champion and a tight end bettered in today’s game only by the great Gronk. Andy Reid just spreads the field—five of the six touchdown passes Sunday came on two-by-two formations—and lets Mahomes find the open guy. He doesn’t care who it is.

I spoke to Patrick Mahomes while he and his dad walked to the team bus after the game. Patrick Mahomes was polite. He dished out credit like John Stockton dished the basketball. He sounded absolutely unsurprised by what’s happened in the first two games.

“What’s happened speaks to Coach Reid and everything he’s taught me in the last year,” Mahomes said. “He’s prepared me to go out and play fast. In this system, if you can play fast, you can take advantage of things against the defense. And the talent and the legends I have around me—I’m just really trying to get the ball out of my hands and into these playmakers’ hands.”

This was an odd game. The Chiefs went up 21-0 on three TD throws from Mahomes in the first quarter. The Steelers came back with a 21-0 second quarter, on three TD throws from Roethlisberger. So the Steelers, and their crowd, came out revved up when the Chiefs got to the ball to start the third quarter.

Bang: first play, Mahomes to Tyreek Hill for 36 yards. Four plays later came Mahomes’ favorite play of the day. From the Steeler 25, two receivers left (tight end Travis Kelce on the inside) and two split right, Mahomes took a shotgun snap and stared down Chris Conley, the receiver to Kelce’s left. That seemed to keep rookie safety Terrell Edmunds outside, on Conley. Now came Mahomes’ eyes back to center field, to Kelce. He zinged a laser to Kelce up the left seam. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see Mahomes go to either receiver on his right, really; the spacing on this play, and in this offense in general, is superb.

 
 
“I kind of eyed the safety off,” Mahomes said, “and that gave Travis enough room. I actually threw it a little low, but he made a heck of a play to catch it.”

“I thought that was the amazing part of the game,” dad Pat Mahomes said later. “The Steelers come back to tie it, and on the first series out of halftime, he just drives the length of the field and throws another one. Right there, everybody realizes he’s a player.”

We see. “I mean, there’s a little bit of a surprise,” Patrick Mahomes said. “I knew with this offense anything could happen, but coming out of the gate like this, it’s pretty awesome.”

I wondered what Pat Mahomes the pitcher thought of how his son had been schooled so far. He praised Reid lavishly (“He’s taught my son how to be a professional”) but he saved special praise for Alex Smith. Last year, Smith knew when the Chiefs traded the 2018 first-round pick to move up in the 2017 first round to take Mahomes his days were numbered. Smith, of course, lasted one more season. But he taught Mahomes what he knew about football. “How to prepare, mostly,” Mahomes the quarterback told me. “He taught me how to make sure I was ready for any situation that presented itself in a game. I owe him a lot.”

Dads understand and appreciate help given to their children. So Pat Mahomes told Smith several times last year how much he appreciated what he did for his boy. Unspoken was the fact that they both knew Patrick was there to take Smith’s job.

“That’s what’s so admirable about what Alex did all season for him,” Pat Mahomes said. “I know how it was when I came up [to the Minnesota Twins, in 1992]. I remember one time that year asking Jack Morris how he threw his split-finger fastball. He said, ‘Get away from me, you little MF. You’ll be trying to take my job next year.’ ”

When Patrick was 6, in 2001, his father played for the Texas Rangers. Alex Rodriguez was a first-year Ranger, having signed a $252-million deal to move from Seattle. “Alex would take Patrick down to the cage, and he’d take batting practice, and then he’d break down the tape with Patrick and teach him about his swing. Patrick loves A-Rod,” Pat Mahomes said. “Being around those clubhouses was great for him. It taught him the value of hard work in sports, and how professional athletes should act.”

The lessons worked. Patrick fell in love with football, and football is loving him back right about now. “We’re not done,” offensive coordinator Eric Bienemy told Mahomes after the game in Pittsburgh.

“I know,” Patrick Mahomes said. “I’ve got a long way to go.”

The path looks pretty clear.

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