Stand back LeBron and Serena. Patrick Mahomes is the new face of US sports
It’s not easy making stars out of a lot of football players. For a start there’s always that pesky helmet getting in the way. Without a face to focus on, it figures that most observers turn their attentions to whomever’s holding the ball – which is often the quarterback. And in the NFL’s 100-year history, there’s never been a passer who can sling it quite like Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes.
In a 2019 season marked by the spectacular rise of Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson, you could be forgiven for forgetting that it was the 24-year-old Mahomes who first obliterated tired misconceptions about black quarterbacks last year during an MVP season that saw him set records for passing yards (5,097) and touchdowns (50) while carrying the Chiefs an overtime possession short of a Super Bowl appearance in just his second year as a starter.
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During this year’s postseason run, however, Mahomes would remind the world of his otherworldly powers. After guiding the Chiefs to the AFC’s No2 seed – and this despite a dislocated patella in his right knee that cost him two mid-season games – Mahomes almost single-handedly rallied his team from big deficits against the Texans and Titans. Just as spellbinding as those magic tricks is the fiery portrait of Mahomes on the Chiefs sideline during the Texans game, curls bobbing, cheeks flushed, hazel eyes aglow, hands chopping the air while exhorting his offensive teammates not to let the Texans’ 21-zip first-quarter lead get them down. By halftime his Chiefs had a 28-24 advantage, and from there a 51-31 rout was on.
It’s hard to bet against an indomitable spirit like that. So it figures that the bookies basically have this game as a coin flip. Against any of the AFC’s other playoff contenders this year, the Niners would hold a comfortable advantage. Their defense is ruthlessly efficient, their offense runs at warp speed and their young coach, the son of a two-time Super Bowl winner, already knows how to win the big game. Meanwhile, the Chiefs defense is built to bend, not break, and their coach has a chronic history of late-game time management problems – not least in Super Bowl XXXIX.
In football, it is customary to pick the best team over the best player. And yet, for Patrick Lavon Mahomes II, many are more than willing to make an exception. Understand: there’s a reason why they call it a gridiron. The game flows in two dimensions, along an x-y plane. Young quarterbacks in particular are trained to move laterally and longitudinally along the grid to evade pressure and are dismissed as serious prospects in an instant for not adhering to a prescribed set of throwing mechanics. Keeping the arm at a 90-degree angle, tracking the elbow up and over the shoulder, setting the feet perpendicular to the target, never throwing off the back foot, etc. Mahomes? He throws overhead, side armed, damn near underhanded; he throws fadeaway passes, no-looks – and finds his man 66% of the time. And when those options are off the table? He’ll run right past you. It’s a lesson the Titans learned the hard way in the AFC Championship game. And if you weren’t rooting for them or the Chiefs, well, what else could you do but giggle? Or kick yourself if you were one of the nine teams that passed on Mahomes in the 2017 draft.
As mind bending feats of athleticism go, only Steph Curry can match Mahomes for spectacle. Before Curry crashed the NBA, the best three-point shots were the ones closest to the line. Now, not even a workaday player draws an icy stare from his coach for heaving a 40-foot jumper. This is the game that Steph has made, and one shudders to think how Mahomes might reinvent his sport, too.
Certainly, his performance on Sunday will be an important demarcation point. And if he were indeed to carry the day? Why, his postseason wouldn’t just go down as the most memorable run by a quarterback since a former grocery clerk named Kurt Warner bagged a Lombardi Trophy for the St Louis Rams 20 years ago. It would vault Mahomes to a level of superstardom perhaps no NFL quarterback has ever known. Oh sure, the league has had its share of passing fancies in the last half century, but there’s always been something distant about them. Joe Namath’s appeal was too corrupting, Joe Montana’s too cool. Tom Brady is a spectacularly rich, supermodel-wedded, Uggs-wearing football cyborg who may or may not have benefited from years of organizational cheating. And Peyton Manning desperately wants to be everyone’s best friend.
But there’s something about Mahomes that seems accessible to everyone. It could be his teenage kisser or his Kermit-adjacent voice or the way he carves up his opponents with the warmest of smiles. It could be the sight of him swaggering into Arrowhead Stadium for an October kickoff in Satchel Paige’s Kansas City Monarchs jersey – an incredible gesture that pays respect to his new town, his father (a former Major League pitcher) and the under-heralded legacy of Negro Leagues baseball in one fell swoop.
Either way, that face figures to be prominent during the Super Bowl and in commercials for State Farm, Head & Shoulders and Helzberg Diamonds. What’s more, whether he wins or loses, his endorsements will increase. His Chiefs salary, too.
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As it happens Mahomes will segue into contract negotiations as the league’s collective bargaining agreement with the players’ union expires in the 2020 season. It would be the surprise of the decade if the Chiefs didn’t execute a fifth-year option on Mahomes’s services, which would spike his take-home from the around $2m he’s making now to $25m for the 2021 season. And with NFL teams’ salary caps projected to zoom to around $200m (from $188m now), industry analysts aren’t just saying Mahomes could be the league’s highest paid quarterback. They’re saying Mahomes could be in line for NBA money as pro football’s first $200m man.
And if that indeed were to come to pass, who among us could say Mahomes didn’t deserve it. In two short years he has changed America’s most popular league for the better. And if he keeps it up, he won’t just be the face of a league. He’ll be the face of American sports.
