With Patrick Mahomes dominating the NFL and taking over from Tom Brady, talkSPORT takes a holiday look at his 12 most important life moments…
There are certain watershed moments in sports where one decision leads to a butterfly effect that forever changes the course of history.
Michael Jordan slipping to No. 3 in the 1984 NBA Draft and joining a lowly Chicago Bulls franchise before ultimately revitalizing the team — and the NBA — en route to winning six world championships and earning global cultural icon status is certainly one of them.
Tom Brady being completely overlooked in the 2000 NFL Draft before landing with the New England Patriots 199th overall and going on to become the greatest quarterback in history as part of a six-time Super Bowl winning dynasty is another.
Patrick Mahomes landing in Kansas City with the Chiefs may well turn out to be the most recent.
Mahomes is the consensus best player in football. A three-time Super Bowl winner and three-time Super Bowl MVP, the irrepressible quarterback is currently bidding to win an unprecedented third consecutive Lombardi Trophy.
Once upon a time the prospect of another player eclipsing Brady’s NFL legacy was deemed unthinkable, but in a matter of a few years Mahomes has slowly but surely crept up on TB12 and caused fans and experts alike to rethink how untouchable Brady’s record of seven Super Bowl victories really is.
It’s been quite the journey for the son of a baseball star who once looked like following in his MLB father’s footsteps.
Few, if any, could have predicted Mahomes’ meteoric rise to the summit of the NFL mountain.
In fact, many predicted the exact opposite ahead of the 2017 NFL Draft.
Mahomes was a three-star QB and the 50th ranked player in the state of Texas coming out of high school.
Mahomes threw for over 5,000 yards and completed almost 66 percent of his passes in college, but his team lost a lot (he went 13-19 at Texas Tech) and scouts had their doubts about the budding signal caller’s ceiling.
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His accuracy issues (he threw 29 interceptions in three seasons at Texas) and inconsistent footwork were two major concerns among experts.
The NFL’s official website still has Mahomes’ pre-draft bio, which mentions that “he’s developed some bad habits and doesn’t have a very repeatable process as a passer.”
It adds that his “willingness to default to playground style appears to limit his ability to get into a consistent rhythm,” and Mahomes’ “decision making can go from good to bad in a moment’s notice.”
Not just that, Mahomes was also supposedly “impatient” and “needs better touch on intermediate and deep balls.”
As a result, he was seen as a first rounder in the draft, likely top ten, rather than an automatic top three pick.
However, Andy Reid and the Chiefs evidently saw something in the young gunslinger that other teams didn’t.
Sensing their moment, Kansas City, which originally had the No. 27 overall pick in that 2017 draft, traded three picks to the Buffalo Bills — a fierce AFC rival — to move up to No. 10 and select Mahomes.
After watching the Chicago Bears take Mitch Trubisky with the second overall pick and the Cincinnati Bengals select the former fastest NFL player ever at No. 9, the Chiefs struck, and the rest, as they say, is history.
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However, Mahomes wasn’t an immediate hit.
The infamously freezing cold — and ultimately ridiculously wide of the mark –draft grades at the time predicted Reid as having a major project on his hands.
At first, they were right. Mahomes was nowhere near the level required to start an NFL game, and instead of playing professional snaps he cut his teeth under the tutelage of consummate pro Alex Smith, who was the Chiefs QB1 at the time.
Mahomes spent the entirety of his rookie season on the bench, but after impressing in a meaningless game against the Broncos in Week 17 of his rookie season, the young field general had shown he was the future of the franchise.
‘Showtime’ never looked back after winning the starting spot over Smith the following season, winning two regular season MVPs while orchestrating three Super Bowl triumphs that saw him named SB MVP on all three occasions.
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The man who once signed the largest sports contract in history has thrown for 31,613 yards, 239 touchdowns, and 74 interceptions with a career completion percentage of 66.7. He also has 2,184 rushing yards and 13 rushing TDs.
If the 29-year-old Mahomes retired tomorrow, he’d be a first ballot Hall of Famer, and it goes without saying that the Chiefs won that 2017 trade with the Bills.
Many a member of Bills Mafia will rue their team’s fateful trade with the Chiefs and wonder ‘what if?’ Mahomes lined up in royal blue instead of red.
But Buffalo eventually landed on their own ‘Superman’ quarterback in the form of Josh Allen, who they selected seventh overall in the draft after Mahomes.
Allen is arguably the one other NFL QB who can claim to be Mahomes’ equal, even though his career accolades pale in comparison.
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However, this season Allen is playing at an MVP level, which is more than can be said for Mahomes, and recently got one over on his respected rival as the Bills handed the Chiefs their first, and so far only, defeat of the season.
The Chiefs and Bills are now seemingly on a collision course in the AFC with the playoffs looming.
Mahomes is 3-0 against Allen’s Bills in the postseason, a streak Buffalo will no doubt look to arrest this year should they meet in the playoffs.
A victory, and subsequent Super Bowl win, may go some way in showing their decision to trade with Kansas City back in 2017 wasn’t such a disaster after all.