Twelve hours later, Patrick Mahomes still could not find any better words to describe how it felt to fulfil a lifelong goal. After steering the Kansas City Chiefs to a comeback win over the San Francisco 49ers in Sunday night’s Super Bowl, he had described the moment as “surreal”. Collecting his award as the game’s Most Valuable Player on Monday morning, he returned once again to that term.
“In reality you never could imagine what this feels like,” he said. “It’s surreal to be a Super Bowl champion, to know all the hard work that you put in every single day has paid off. Being the champ with your brothers, you can never think of what that’s like.”
The peculiarity of this moment can only have been heightened by a kiss from Minnie Mouse before he began. On the eve of Super Bowl LIV, a Mahomes tweet from 2013, when he was 17 years-old, had gone viral, in which he pondered what it would feel like “to be the quarterback who says ‘I’m going to Disney World’ after winning the Super Bowl”. He had found out on Sunday night, but now – thanks to a new sponsorship deal for this award, Disney World had come to him.
Still, he would be reminded before the end of this press conference about the cold realities of the business he inhabits. Mahomes has one year remaining on his rookie contract in Kansas City, and was asked how big of a priority it would be to get a new deal done in the offseason.
“To me that’s stuff that’s handled with other people,” said Mahomes. “Obviously I want to be in Kansas City for a long time. I also want to win a lot of games here. For me, it’s letting that stuff handle itself. I’m in a great organisation, I have a great team of guys and girls working for me. So it’s about trusting those people to find the best way to do it, in order to have the best time around me and about getting that done when the time’s right.”
Already it is being speculated that Mahomes’s contract could be the first in the NFL to break the $200m threshold, although the Chiefs face a delicate balancing act as they seek to meet their star quarterback’s financial expectations whilst conforming to the league’s salary cap and also surrounding him with the talent he needs to keep delivering titles.
The latter point is not lost on him, either. Asked how he could follow up on Sunday’s achievement, Mahomes answered simply: “Win another one.” He knows he cannot do it alone.
“We’ve built a brotherhood with this team,” Mahomes said. “You can see it with the way we play and how we support each other. So obviously we want to keep as many people here, keep as many people with the Kansas City Chiefs, and keep this brotherhood going. For me, obviously we want to win a lot of football games, but I think more than anything I want to be around these guys every single day.”
His coach feels likewise about working with such extraordinary talent.
“It just kinda came natural to him,” said Reid. “He works on it, but there is a part that is just easy for him. He sees the field. You say ‘all quarterbacks can do that’, no they don’t. Not like he does. He comes off and can tell you, accurately, what he saw that play. There’s video evidence if you’re right or wrong every play.
“This guy’s unbelievable. He can take it all in. He challenges you to give him more, his aptitude is ridiculous. As a coach you love that, able to feed him new plays, and he gobbles those things up, makes them look even better than they did on paper.”
That is true even when Mahomes is not getting his hands on the ball. One of the more memorable plays of this year’s Super Bowl came in the first-half, with the Chiefs facing fourth-and-one at the 49ers’ five-yard line. After lining up in a conventional goalline package, the Chiefs changed formation and the ball was snapped directly to running back Damien Williams, who took the ball down to the one-yard line.
Talking about the same play, Reid confirmed that the inspiration had come from a 1948 college game between Michigan and USC. “My brother’s high-school coach was actually in that game for USC, so I had a bit of tape,” he explained. “Went back through it and pulled that out. We actually have a whole package based on that. So you’ll have to wait for next year: there’s some more good stuff.”
