Where Patrick Mahomes gets his cool

Every morning, Jake Parker wakes up in Midland, Texas, in a secluded caravan a few hundred feet from a hole in the ground. Parker relies on engineers who design oil wells and oversee all phases of construction, from innovation to production. "They know a little more about the process than us," says Parker. The young man of 22 years has a specific but important job: as a wired operator, he manipulates the precision tool needed to make changes to the bottom of the well. If an engineer requests a hole in the wall of the well 15,000 feet from the ground, Parker makes an explosive powerful enough to reduce a man to a puddle of bone and tendon, connect it to the end of a cable, place it in the hole and trigger the charge. There is a lot of free time at the well; a lot of waiting for the moment you need. On Sundays, when he can not go to town, he broadcasts NFL games on his phone over an inaccurate Wi-Fi connection. By all means necessary, he will see his old friend and teammate of Whitehouse High, Patrick Mahomes, take shots for the Kansas City Chiefs. "I watch every game no matter how I do it," says Parker. He is part of a group of guys from Tyler, Texas, who do the same thing. Sunday night in Denver, as the NFL world slumped to a second-year quarterback in third and seventh place, passing the ball from his right hand to his left hand in a sprint to death to complete a pass unlikely for a first critical essay, the guys in the group text have returned to the archives.

Do you remember when Pat hit that left-handed home run?

Yes! He called him!

The group text remembers.

They were 14 years old and the small all-star league team Tyler East (Mahomes and Parker) faced Tyler West. Patrick's father, Pat, the former thrower of Major League Baseball, was one of the managers. East managed with West and, playing out of reach, Patrick took a moment before heading to the circle of the bridge and made an announcement to the canoe. Patrick had never been a hitmaker (nor pitcher from elsewhere). He had played only a left-handed shot in the moments of trouble in training. "We had a big lead as usual and he got up and said," I'm going to go left-handed and hit a home run, "said Parker." He'd be messing around in the time box in time but nobody was expecting him to hit a homerun in a match. "

So they laughed, and their teammate approached the plate, stuck his right foot in front of him and zoned. The first pitch was low and far away. Ball one. The second step encountered the aluminum alloy and passed over the center-right fence. He actually did it. On a lark, Patrick Mahomes called his shot and hit a left handed circuit.

In Denver, in 2018, Patrick Mahomes' new teammates had a very different reaction to his latest left-handed feat. The leaders beat Justin Houston, his 260-pound, in the locker room, feverish after a 27-23 win. Before the media was allowed to enter and before coach Andy Reid delivered a victory speech, Houston jogged around the room, passing a bag of equipment to a venue. another, of a discarded helmet and epaulettes, imitating his new hero. The 94-year veteran of the regular season and five playoff games in the NFL has raised a big left hand and launched a dummy spiral to anyone who would like to catch him, a tribute to a man and a moment.

About an hour earlier, Broncos defense coordinator Joe Woods had his defense in the perfect pattern for the screenplay; the blitz was so well disguised that the center of the chiefs Mitch Morse sent the protection on the wrong side. Mahomes beat his tail and sprint on the sideline, then exchanged his hands and threw the ball to Tyreek Hill, while Von Miller trailed Mahomes down from behind. The fact that the play took place in front of the chiefs' bench was the icing on the cake; Defensive defensemen and offensive reserves acted as if they had seen LeBron James hitting a batter from the half-court with one hand in his face.

"It showed how cold he was. It has ice in your veins, "said Houston once things calmed down in the visitors' locker room. "To be so confident in your left hand, fleeing, fourth quarter? You're a cold-blooded guy to do things like that. At that moment, the coach passed by and caught the smuggler's gaze. Reid put a finger to his mouth and whispered: "Hush, hush, hush," while he was heading towards the bus.

Calm down, Justin. For God's sake, do not do it.

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Mahomes, the tenth pick in the NFL's 2017 draft in four weeks, offered the kind of performances that drew the MVP's attention; In fact, he was chosen as a favorite among MVP favorites before the fifth week. His 1,200 yards and 14 touchdowns (with zero interception) lead to the NFL and the Chiefs lead 4-0 in Sunday's showdown in northeastern Florida. with Jacksonville's No.1 Defense.

Mahomes has become the reluctant face of a big offense over the years; Mitchell Schwartz, the Ironman's right tackle, was drafted by former general manager Scott Pioli and head coach Romeo Crennel one season before John Dorsey and Andy Reid occupy it. the position in 2013. A year later, Dorsey and Reid found halfback Travis Kelce in third place. round. They recruited center Mitch Morse in the second round in 2015, wide receiver Hill in the fifth round in 2016, then Mahomes and the offensive midfielder Kareem Hunt in 2017, a few months before Dorsey was replaced by the current general manager Brett Veach. Now in his first year as a starter, Mahomes is at the center of a highly specialized and thorough attack. He alternately uses a fast passing game to put the ball in the hands of the leaders and throw deep balls dime 40 to 60 meters downfield.

Ask boys from home, high school ball coaches at Plano or oil pumping in Midland, they think all of this is possible when they go home at the start of the 5A series, and they will honestly tell you: No . He always excelled in all the sports he practiced, but he was never the kind of prodigious quarterback who put the Division I coaches in the bleachers, knocking the door open with offers.

Mahomes, in fact, nearly left football in the summer before his first year of high school, according to his mother, Randi. He played safety in his second year and felt he did not get a free kick at the position he wanted, the quarterback. Rather than compete in a QB competition as a junior, he decided to focus on basketball and baseball. (Mahomes would be drafted by the Detroit Tigers at the end of his third year in 2014, in the 37th round.) His mother encouraged him to pray.

Football had a big advantage, though. While the baseball team worked in relative anonymity and the professional lifestyle of the sport promised at least a few years on the road with even more anonymity, football was different. The football team had the juice.

"I think it had to do with the fans that he had in football," says Randi. "You are in Texas, everyone is watching the football game on Friday night. At first he loved football, but he did not like it. He came to my home in first grade and said he did not think he was going to play anymore. They did not let him play at the shift.

"But in basketball, they would do well and no one would come to the games. They would do baseball well and no one would come to the games. In football, the stands are full.

"He was finally allowed to play quarterback and direct, and he just fell in love."

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Ask Patrick Mahomes about the growing pressure of victories and falling records. He has a simple answer, the one we expect from this generation of CEO quarterbacks: "I do not feel that pressure just because we left. so many games there. . . 60-yard bombs that could have been hit, "Mahomes told MMQB. "I have the guys that I have around me – the offensive line is blocking their tail, I have all these weapons at the wide receiver and at the tight end, so I know I do not have any." I do not have to try to do too much. " I just have to play in the system and let Reid call the plays and run. "

If Mahomes is only a cog in the machine, as he has described, he is an exceptional cog. His teammates marvel at his level of maturity, how he never gets too high or too low; how it does the kinds of things that it can take NFL years to develop – feel a back pressure, know when to throw it, browse progress readings – if they develop it at all. "During the week, he can be harassed. There are coaches behind him who talk at every game, in his ear, "said receiver Sammy Watkins. "Then comes the day of the match and they let it go. I watch him do four readings every day, which is rare for a young man. He is really special. "

"He has this unique trust," says Reid. "He never brags, never boasts, but he's confident, and the guys feel it."

There is a popular theory about what makes Mahomes so cool under pressure and the fact that the big moments – debut in the NFL, a winning rally on the road – hardly seem to be with him. According to the theory, the calm that reigns in this storm at Patrick comes from the time of his father's baseball. Patrick was a child who took advantage of every opportunity to be with his father when he played (for six different major league teams from 1992 to 2003), which meant that the summer afternoons were devoted to the practice of strikes. ground in some of the most venerated baseball sites. Pat's teammates were asking how he and Randi had persuaded their young son to come to the stadium while their own kids were playing video games at home. The child simply can not be denied the opportunity to play ball. The young Patrick saw Derek Jeter take off and Alex Rodriguez get to work, from near and far, and, according to the theory, blame themselves for the celebrities and the heavy consequences generally attributed to events such as the results of football matches .

"I'm going to guess that it's about growing up around the sport," said Chiefs tackle Schwartz. "When you're in the league locker room and taking lessons with Alex Rodriguez, you're insensitive to the fact that it's a different life. A combination of that and the natural "it" factor we're talking about with the quarterbacks. Things slow down and make sense to him.

"He was raised in baseball and played wrestling with Alex Rodriguez," said Eric Morris, offensive coordinator of Mahomes at Texas Tech, "so I've always thought it probably helped a lot. Was never too big for him.He was used to it.When he entered this environment, he was never baffled.

His father agrees, "I think it's because he grew up in the clubhouse. It has adopted the same state of mind as some of the professional players, "says Pat Mahomes.

But mom says that's not necessarily true. When Patrick was a young boy, too young to understand the breadth of his father's accomplishments in professional sports, he never seemed too excited. "It drove me crazy when he was little because I grew up in a small town and I could not travel and do a lot of things, but he did," says Randi, "but he "Never got excited." Disney World, Yankee Stadium He's never been excited about it – I wanted him to be excited about some things, but that's not his personality. Pay attention to what you want because my other son is excited enough for 20 people. "

Patrick was a little introverted child from the beginning. He would have friends in primary school and stay alone, refusing to play. Her parents divorced at the age of 11, in 2006, the year that Randi described as the most difficult of her life. He eventually formed a small group of friends through the sport and although they might have terrorized Tyler on the weekends after football wins, they usually stay away from the party, according to Mahomes' friends. . When he arrived at Texas Tech, a year after Baker Mayfield landed briefly, the contrast was striking. Mayfield, who was transferred to Oklahoma after a season, was noisy and noisy, leading with her mouth and supporting her with his arm. Mahomes was reserved and let his arm speak.

(When Mahomes spoke, his hoarse voice became a source of amusement in the Texas Tech football program.) The equipment manager, Zane Perry, nicknamed Mahomes, "Kermit the Frog." Mahomes has always laughed, but his mother got involved when Reid took the lead Ms. Mahomes said: "Patrick finds that it's funny, but as a mother, I'm like, why does he say my son has it? frog look? My sister would say that you have to get checked would say, "You have to worry about your own child. I have this message".

"He's not one of those rah rah guys, "said Jakeem Grant, a former Texas Tech film catcher and current receiver of the Miami Dolphins. "But every time he talks, everyone is silent and listens. He has this booty of silent boy.

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When Mahomes was selected by the Chiefs, a team that already employed a veteran quarterback with a beginner's experience in the finals and playoffs, it was fair to ask how the dynamics would play out. Would Smith turn his back on the rookie and let him go on his own? How could the rookie start ordering a locker room that is largely loyal to Smith if the two appeared to disagree?

Fortunately for Mahomes, none of this has been supported. According to Reid, Smith was not a tutor for Mahomes; it was not his job. But he was always available for Patrick and kept him informed of his schedule. If Smith came early to train before the meetings, he informed Patrick, who was following. If Smith planned to stay late to watch a movie, he would warn him. "Alex was going to be Alex," Reid says. "He left the door open for Patrick to join him. He just said, I'm going to be here at this hour, looking up, having dinner, watching tapes, looking at more tapes, studying the game plan shots in relation to all the covers and making your own little squiggles to understand it . He gave it to Patrick for free, and that does not always happen.

"It's a big ego position. The QB room can sometimes be a little catchy. But Patrick got into a great situation. Alex did not make any request to him, but he did not close the door to him. Patrick can not pay enough for this opportunity. "

Few would have blamed Smith if he had wanted to sulk or ignore Mahomes, who had been chosen with the 10th choice instead of a number of worthy players in other positions. (The No. 11 pick in the repechage, Saints cornerback Marshon Lattimore, won in 2017 as a top talent, winning the defensive rookie of the year and a nod to the Pro Bowl .) But Smith was content with his business and had the best season of his career, leading the leaders to 10-6 and the AFC West crown. After losing to the Steelers in the first-round playoffs, Schwartz called Smith "best quarterback of the NFL this year."

"I think he's generally underestimated," Schwartz told The MMQB. "We really understand in our locker room how valuable it is for our attack compared to other NFL quarters."

And if Smith were to be exchanged, and Mahomes named the starter? "If that was the case and Alex was absent, we would understand what we are losing," Schwartz said. "We know that Alex is really the driving force that makes the offense go away."

What Schwartz did not say, and what became clear to many people in the locker room during the 2017 season, is that Mahomes was a kind of monster. The prospect of seeing him play live was, at the very least, a subject of great intrigue.

Justin Houston recalls watching the 2017 Atlanta draft with friends, excited to see who Reid and Dorsey would add to the talent of Smith's young executive, or perhaps a defense that had seen better days. But the choice was Mahomes, the Texas Tech quarterback who had never had better than a 7-6 season in his day as Red Raider. However, a friend at the rally assured Houston that Mahomes was a special talent. He sent to Houston a video of Mahomes throwing a 65-yard football by sprinting from the pocket.

"In all honesty, I said, who is it? We exchanged to get it? "Houston recalls. "We got Alex at that time and that was the last thing I thought I would do. But we did it, and God as a witness, I'm so glad we did it.

"I remember coming to OTA [that year] and he made a pitch, and I knew at that moment that he was special. He was driving to his left and he hit the guy about 30 meters off a railroad crossing. I was like, Oh yes. "

In January 2018, the Chiefs transferred Smith to Washington for cornerback Kendall Fuller, promoting Mahomes.

"I understand," says Houston. "We've known for a moment that it's one in a million. He is one of a kind. "

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It's hard to find the perfect word to describe how football leaves Patrick Mahomes' right hand. throw is too vague and does not really reflect its novelty. throw describes the right amount of strength but exaggerates the effort. The same applies to launching and mandrel. Morris, the former Texas Tech offensive coordinator, probably said it best: "You turn on the Texas Tech tape, and it's just Patrick, who runs left, turns right and goes 50 meters to open wide. guys."

Flip. It's going to work.

That's what Morris saw in the summer before Mahomes' high school junior season (when he almost left), when Texas Tech recruited the star of the preparation track, KD Cannon at a summer camp . Cannon met with Patrick Mahomes at the camp and asked him to throw only "go" bullets in face-to-face scenarios. Representative after representative, Mahomes let fly a perfect deep ball without much ceremony or liquidation.

This performance put Mahomes, who had not yet started a quarterback match, at any level, on the Texas Tech radar. This helped that Whitehouse High, led by Adam Cook, recently adopted the air raid offense, pioneered by Hal Mumme and Mike Leach in the late 1980s, starting at Iowa Weslyan College. Practitioners include coaches Lincoln Riley, Kingsbury Kliff, Sonny Dykes, Dana Holgersen and Morris, who left Texas Tech after the 2017 season to lead the football team at Incarnate Word, an FCS program in San Antonio.

The attack, like Mumme and Leach, was based on a fast passing game, large splits of offensive lines, no group, and the freedom of the coach or quarterback to diagnose the defense before audible and audible for an appropriate game. For two decades, Air Raid quarterbacks have fizzled in the NFL. The best five quarters of the NCAA's history – Case Keenum, Timmy Chang, Landry Jones, Graham Harrell and Ty Detmer – are all alumni of Air Raid. These five players combined have 72 starts in the NFL and zero appearances at the Super Bowl.

On the one hand, the system never required a big arm to succeed, but only the ability to make quick readings and release the balloon as quickly. In addition, Air Raid quarterbacks did not usually learn as much offensive football as their peers, given the strong dependence of the system on the coach. For another, NFL coaches were often unwilling to adapt their fouls to fouls that many thought could not translate for the NFL.

Mahomes said, "You hear a lot of this stuff, especially from analysts and journalists. But NFL coaches determine how much you really control. I think today the air raid does not have much effect. Now you report to the quarterback and he makes the calls and signals to everyone else. It's still a different degree of responsibility in the NFL, but at least you have the responsibility to commit an offense. These guys like Harrell arrived too early.

"The NFL is always adapting. We have more speed on the field now, things are more scattered and things are adjusted for the quarterbacks who are used to that. The coaches say: give the ball to these playmakers and let them run with it. "

Morris is not so sure that the first Air Raid QBs are destined to succeed today: "Patrick was not your typical Graham Harrell nor Tim Couch. [the 1999 No. 1 pick who played under Mumme at Kentucky]"He says his arm talent is so much better than these guys, and I think we've really expanded the Mike Leach system and asked them to do a lot of different things, rather than playing the same thing. 30 pieces again and again Mike Leach is the only one to stay true to his roots and do the real work of Air Raid. "

Watch any Chiefs game this season and you'll see the concepts of air raid passes being splashed, but Andy Reid quickly states that his plan for Mahomes did not include air raid replication. It is more complicated than that.

As in any massively successful small-scale football program, be it Walter Camp's Full House back-field or Bum Phillips's 3-4 defense, the chain of custody is following a trajectory basic. First, it is considered a gadget by the institution and then adopted by a wave of innovators. It is designed to adapt to changing staff, rules, and imagination, until it has dozens of iterations at all levels. It is then that it becomes either a permanent or semi-permanent aspect of the game, or its opponent understands it, or the rules change the way the game is played, and it disappears, sometimes as suddenly as it has sprouted .

Individual games go through the hands of multiple coaches and programs and lead their own lives, with a complex and sometimes indecipherable etymology. Take, for example, a new staple of the chiefs offense. In the Super Bowl XLIX, Arizona, in February 2015, Bill Belichick's Patriots presented a variant of an original Air Raid concept from Hal Mumme's photocopied reading books. The inside receiver follows a flat road to the sideline, the outside receiver is tilted and the quarterback simulates a transfer, then decides between the two roads. In Texas Tech, Morris and Kingsbury have enjoyed the call of the game and have thought to add an optional element of the pass, in which the quarterback has the opportunity to pass the ball. They installed the room for the 2016 season. A year later, the chefs started to organize something similar. Reid said the inspiration came not from the Patriots, nor from Texas Tech, but from Alex Smith's experience in Utah in the early 2000s. When Mahomes took over KC, the game was given to him . For his part, Mahomes was running a variant of this same RPO since he was 16 years old. What Texas Tech called "Dragon," Whitehouse High called "Cougar."

"I think Kingsbury is great," says Reid, "and Patrick's high school coach was probably smart with that sort of thing. With RPOs, the ability to run or to throw the ball while working your blocking assignments is so valuable. So we borrowed two or three things, but most of our attacks are the same as we did. "

Morris said, "I think Patrick was lucky to have Andy Reid as a head coach who allows him to use his skills."

The chain of control can be confusing, but the current key holder is alone at the top. Mahomes is not just a special talent, it's a man who has landed exactly in the right place at the right time. And watching Mahomes in freestyle, seeing him save time and make the shots you can not teach, is wondering what's going to happen.

In fact, know this in case you think you'll see it all: Mahomes gave Reid his favorite piece of Texas Tech and the Chiefs set it up but have not called it yet in a match.

"It's probably something that provides maximum protection," Morris says, "where he may have some time to put himself in the pocket and throw it away."

We are going to watch.

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