How 'Turbo Andy' Reid went all-in against Patrick Mahomes with the Kansas City Chiefs

Reid and the Kansas City leaders invited Mahomes in the spring of 2017 for preliminary training. Like other teams, they created an installation day simulation to teach him some of their attack. Mahomes sat silently, listening and writing furiously with a pencil, while Reid taught him a selection of plays, trainings, protections, and calls. When it was over, they took him out of the room to take a break and test his detention.

Upon his return, Reid reversed the scenario. It was now time for Mahomes to "install him" the offense. Mahomes walked to the front of the room, placed himself in front of the whiteboard and – in the singular Texas voice that Twist rightly called "froggish" – spat out the leaders' offensive almost verbatim from the morning session .

"The reminder that he did is crazy," said offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy later. "You can play about 12 to 15 pieces over a seven to seven period. Then you sit down and ask him exactly what happened, for example, Play 3. He can remember exactly what happened to him, to whom he told you, and he can tell you exactly what cover they were playing, and that's not surprising, it's one of the most impressive things that you can do. It tells you that he sees everything and absorbs everything that a lot of guys do not do. "

He showed not only what the leaders would discover to be a photographic memory, the one described by the Hall of Fame quarterback, Kurt Warner, in all the elite passers-by, but also a deep understanding of the relationship between the concepts of the NFL. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Arizona Cardinals former coach Bruce Arians then compared it to the sound of Peyton Manning and Drew Brees when they discuss football. Reid was sold. "You have had the feeling," Reid said recently, in a discreet manner, "that everything would be fine for Patrick."

"I was selfishly hoping for him that he would go see the leaders."

Kliff Kingsbury, Texas Tech Mahomes coach

Reid decided that Mahomes was a player who deserved to be upset by the plan to beat veteran Alex Smith in the final stages of his pursuit of the Super Bowl championship. Reid, the 10th-winning NFL history coach with 188 career victories, was ready to make a leap of faith in the future. Mahomes fits seamlessly into the West Coast / Spread hybrid system that he has developed.

"Alex is phenomenal," Reid said. "I love the guy, he was fine, but you still want to make sure the job is covered." Alex did not get any younger, he knew it, we knew it. "

Unbeknownst to Reid, those who cared about Mahomes were wanting a similar conclusion.

"I was selfishly hoping for him that he would go see the Chiefs," said Texas Tech coach Kliff Kingsbury. "Knowing what Andy Reid is doing on the offensive, how he adjusts the staff and how he's adapted to every quarterback he's had and made them play a high standard, a perfect place, a perfect storm. "

The story of the rise of Mahomes at the first MVP race behind the Chiefs' 5-0 start and his score of 86.2, leader in the league, QBR is an intersection between two powers that s & # 39; unite in a way that only happens in football paradise. ReidWorld is where quarterbacks are going to flourish.

"When you look at the quarterbacks in the repechage, the first question is always where they will go," said Louis Riddick, an ESPN analyst who spent six years with Reid at the Eagles' club. "And once I know, I can understand what I think this guy is going to become, so when Andy wrote Patrick, I thought," Done. Done, market. "Because I knew how he was going to be treated."

Mahomes has spent his youth among the best professional athletes in the country. During the summer, he accompanied his father, the retired MLB pitcher, Pat Mahomes, to the big league stadium. But Patrick was not afraid of the players he met. He has absorbed, after an initial shock, the work done during the hours preceding a game. Alex Rodriguez, the best hitter of the match, would exchange hundreds of balls on a tee. Mahomes' father, who played for six major teams from 1992 to 2003, studied his notes on each opponent batter over and over again until he memorized them.

"Nobody really sees professional athletes behind the scenes," said the quarterback. "They do not know how hard they work.They do not see how you work on the basics.They could not know it.You do not think that someone who strikes like Alex Rodriguez needs to know. a tee shirt every day, but that's how he stayed on the field, so it's something I saw very young and can apply now. "

to play

Chiefs of the quarter Patrick Mahomes and Alex Rodriguez, a great player of the MLB, tell each other the story of their relationship and explain how Mahomes chose football.

Brad Childress, assistant chiefs in the selection of Mahomes and now head coach of Atlanta Legends, a member of the American Football Alliance, immediately noticed this seriousness.

"You can say that he already knew what all the pros have finally learned," Childress said. "They're not great because they're great, they work to be great."

More than anything, Mahomes said he understood the NFL's workload outside of training sessions and team meetings. When he and his father returned home after a day playing, Patrick was playing video games or going out to play with his friends. Tap? He sat down and began to study his hitter's notes again.

"I use this in my own study habits," Mahomes said. "Take our game plans." Every week, there are postponements from the previous week .It's the same thing.But I'm reviewing this part too, every day, just to make sure know all the aspects and do not take You do not want to be lazy about this, even just before a match, as this may affect the way you play. "

It has long been assumed that Mahomes would apply these lessons to baseball. He was a mixed-sports star who grew up in Whitehouse, Texas, where he played and played offshore, and was drafted in the 37th round of the 2014 MLB draft by the Detroit Tigers. But it was only in his first year at Texas Tech that he got involved in football before baseball.

The binary nature of his sporting background has, in many ways, helped to shape the style of play that NFL fans are beginning to wake up to. More than his rocket arm, Mahomes relies on the instinctive pauses of the pocket to find open receivers. Mahomes has described it as "using every inch of green grass on the ground, whether horizontally or vertically". Kingsbury attributed this phenomenon to the unexpected but rewarding consequence of time sharing between baseball and football in his youth.

"It's just not covered," said Kingsbury. "Maybe not having the quarter tutors who would have worked on his fundamentals, telling him that he always had to get close to his target and have his elbow under a belly." It may have helped him to learn how to throw the ball alone, he has touch and precision from different angles and on different platforms, his ball has just a natural way out, and you can see it in the way he plays. "

"He started talking about incorporating college elements scattered in a west coast offensive offense at least 10 to 12 years ago," Banner said. "You can see it if you look back." Andy is not afraid of anything and passionately believes in aggression, and I think he recognizes that it can happen that "you can not see it. Being aggressive will explode in your face, but the benefits far outweigh the times it can explode in your face. "

The first real test took place in 2010, when the Eagles replaced Donovan McNabb, a six-time Pro Bowl starter, by Michael Vick. Reid valued Vick's mobility even after two years of inactivity, after pleading guilty to felony charges. More than that, Reid thought Vick was a smarter smuggler than most teams thought. As a franchise, Banner said, "We thought Michael Vick could be the guy who could prove that the West Coast offense could incorporate prevalent concepts and revolutionize the NFL."

The results of Reid's experience have been mixed. The Eagles scored 18 to 16 in Vick's 34 Reid debut, making the playoffs once in three tough seasons. But Vick also completed 60.2% of his passes during that period, which is much higher than his career percentage of 53.9% in all other seasons. Something was there, Reid thought. He was not discouraged. After moving to Kansas City in 2013, he acquired veteran quarterback Alex Smith to continue and intensify his career. Smith then had the best five years of his career with Reid.

Andy Reid's QBs with and without him

"Every quarter is different," said Reid, "and your job as a coach is to leverage his strengths, correct his weaknesses and improve them." That's all we're trying to do with our ploy. "

"It's really what they are," Riddick said. "Andy has always had that in mind, and the game has evolved, and he's taking what the competition committee allows him to do, that is, everything the offense wants to do. they can accept what they want and it does it, it spreads you, attacks you in multiple ways and, now, with all due respect to Alex Smith, he now has a guy who can be deadly with that. "

Kingsbury sees it too. "I consider this a perfect storm in terms of weapons and training," he said. "Andy Reid allows him to play hard with his strengths. [backfield formations] and just let him go and be Patrick. "

Reid had once envisioned Smith as the long-term guardian of this evolving project. But when the co-director of the player's staff, Brett Veach, brought him an early screening report of Mahomes and that the then general manager, John Dorsey, approved, Reid agreed to examine him from closer. Dorsey reported directly to owner Clark Hunt, as is currently done by Veach – the current Chiefs Chief Executive -. But everyone in the building knew that it was useless to recruit a quarter without Reid's approval.

"He saw the game well, I thought it was never too fast for him, even last year."

Alex Smith, Former Chiefs Starting QB

His consent was sealed after Mahomes' preliminary visit. Childress recalled the ease with which Mahomes spewed complicated calls of professional style, up to the breaks that make the transition from one group of positions to another.

"We always tell our offense to listen to the words that speak to you," Childress said. "They do not all talk to you, different parts are reserved for groups of different positions, they get their information, obviously it has to be clear, everybody has to hear you, they have to see you. I'm wobbling through these things, you're not very lucky, he could handle that right now. "

When the opportunity to take Mahomes showed up, Reid could not miss this opportunity. Even with a line-up that many NFL observers thought they could advance to the Super Bowl, the Chiefs traded up to choice number 10, giving up choice # 27, their third-round pick and first-choice pick. 2018. Turn your choice to the Buffalo Bills so they can nominate Mahomes as the second QB of the board – apparently to stay inactive for a year or more.

"Brett was on him a year and a half or two years earlier and kept bringing him and bringing him," Reid said. "You want to make sure that, whether the guy is there five years as a substitute or a year, you just want to make sure that you have one when Alex moves on."

The conventional narrative suggests that Mahomes, who was fully engaged in football just two years ago, would have enjoyed his year watching Smith. But the truth is that the chiefs knew what he could do from the moment they brought him in.

"I talk all the time to Brett Veach and these guys," Riddick said. "They told me that from the first day, Lou, you just do not understand what this guy is already doing."

Even Smith saw it and realized that Mahomes' time would arrive quickly.

Mahomes' skills alone do not explain this five-part game. The undeniable presence of chiefs' weapons, from Hill to Kelce, to Hunt and receiver Sammy Watkins, is not. Reid's ploy and his summons make his receivers open in a way unmatched in most of the league. This season, according to NFL Next Gen statistics, 49.5% of Mahomes' attempts were directed towards wide open targets, defined as receivers at least three meters apart from the nearest defender. This figure ranks fifth in the NFL. And a ploy that opens recipients at this rate has helped Mahomes out of his biggest gap in college: interceptions.

In 2015 and 2016, he made 25 picks at Texas Tech, the fourth total among FBS schools over that period, making mistakes that Kingsbury attributed to his aggressive style. With the Chiefs in 2018, Mahomes launched two interceptions in 176 attempts and none before the fifth week. This allowed him to launch about six interceptions over a full season, even though the Chiefs allowed the NFL to be ranked seventh in the pressure rate (32.8).

"It's very important for a quarterback to know how well you can track games that put players in good positions," Riddick said. "That's what counts, that's what separates Andy … (…) I used helmets, especially when we were in Philadelphia, and the countdown started and you play an excellent defense and your quarterback is waiting for this match, and an average person would simply want to mentally reduce himself to the ground and sit in a fetal position because it is very difficult.