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KANSAS CITY, MO – Rob Gaskins jumped to the top of a massage table Wednesday night, climbed the leg of his shorts and presented his right thigh to his favorite tattoo artist, Jeremy Taylor. It had to be cleaned and then shaved so that Taylor could begin to illustrate the most beloved face of the city: quarterback Patrick Mahomes.
Gaskins scheduled this tattoo about three weeks ago, just after Mahomes scored six touchdowns at Pittsburgh, which preceded a shot at goal scoring against San Francisco, which preceded a return to the fourth quarter in the cauldron of cacophony at Denver, where the disc of the bulls is winning. was prolonged the third and the fifth by a torrent of intuition: a blow for left handed by a right handed passer.
Two days later, the Missouri Department of Transportation tweeted an image reminding drivers to follow Mahomes: always go left.
It's a strange day in the Kansas City area, where locals who are used to coveting other crew quarters enjoy a rarer sensation than a vegetarian at Gates Bar-B-Q. After decades of playoff failures, persistent quarterbacks like Tyler Thigpen and Tyler Palko and Brodie Croyle, the most exciting player in N.F.L. now shines at the most critical position of the sport, for their team, in their city.
"Unless you have LeBron in your city, it's the best thing you can have," he said. Carrington Harrison, 30, sports talk radio host and native of Kansas City. "The Chiefs have the coolest thing you can do in the sport. This person is now living in Kansas City. The person lives in Kansas City. "
In the lead-up to Sunday night's game in New England, the Chiefs are 5-0, as they had already done last year, and yet, the general feeling is that this season is just … different. This is the word most often mentioned, apart from the fact that you did not say it.
For fans, Mahomes embodies a New Year's resolution: a 23-year-old guy with a texan nasal twang (called "froggish" by his coach) who can throw a balloon extremely far and very well and in extremely tight spaces, and whose the exploits so far in his first year as a starter – a total of 16 touchdowns, two turnovers – offer them a chance to break free from the past.
And compel an adult man to ask that the Mahomes looped mop be pierced in his skin for all eternity.
"We got it first," said Gaskins, who lives in Belton, Missouri. "He started here. In Kansas City. It did not start in Green Bay, it did not start in San Francisco, it did not start in New York. My house, Kansas City. "
Harrison, the radio host, likened his enthusiasm to LeBron James' court to watching Stephen Curry play Davidson and to The unpredictable rise of Jeremy Lin with the Knicks in 2012. The mania has spread to the west, up to the stage of the television comedy 'Modern Family', where members of the 'Modern Family', team tell Eric Stonestreet, who plays the role of Cam, that they started watching Chiefs' games because of Mahomes.
"I can not tell you how many times I have seen John Elway parade on the field and beat the Chiefs," said Stonestreet, a native of Kansas City, Kansas (in a phone interview) (the answer is eight , according to Pro Football. "Now I have the impression that we have the guy who can do it to other teams after doing it so many times."
Instead of indulging in their traditional hobby of lamenting all the shifts they could have recruited but did not do – Dan Marino and Jim Kelly, for example – Chiefs fans now marvel at that they did. They look at loops of his highlights, post even fawning, allow themselves to submit to his promise.
The next morning, after the Denver overthrow by Kansas City, Ashley Homan, a fifth-grade teacher in Smithville, Missouri, told her students that they were now entering the realm of chiefs – enough for that to happen. 39, teacher across the street, a Broncos fan, heard. Cheryl Jensen, a regular at Game D17 at Arrowhead Stadium, watched Drew Brees set a career career record on Monday night, before telling Facebook friends that she could not wait for Mahomes to beat him.
"Even if they go 5-11 up to the end and we're in Detroit for the next 10 years, I still have to watch this guy," said Clint Ashlock, 38, Artistic Director of the Kansas City Jazz Orchestra. "I never wanted to buy a sweater for anyone, but I did it. I could have two.
More than two sweaters adorn the basement walls of Bob Green's house. It also serves as a museum of chiefs. It contains everything from the autographed catcher's gloves that he won by beating them in the pool of their former training camp in River Falls, Wisconsin, to a red and white painted brick quarterback from the Hall of Fame. , Len Dawson.
The centerpiece, however, is a mural depicting Green's favorite royals and chefs, including Joe Montana, Tony Gonzalez and, starting Monday, Mahomes. It took Green Fl's Chris Fleck about 70 hours to complete the mural, including 12 dedicated to Mahomes.
"When I'm in the grocery store, the department stores and the bank, everyone asks me," Did you see what he did last night? Green said, "You do not even have to ask who he is."
Green, who was born in Iowa, moved to St. Joseph, Missouri, where the leaders are currently organizing the training camp in 1963, when the franchise was transferred from Dallas. Kansas City won the Super Bowl IV in 1970, then made the playoffs only twice in the next 20 years, losing both games.
Then things went really bad.
Buffalo and Cleveland may be making documentaries about their desperation for football, but Kansas City's playoff record is devastating. A win since the 1994 season. Six consecutive losses in the playoffs at Arrowhead.
When you question the fans of the leaders about this brutal loss suffered by the Colts, you must specify which one. In 1996, Lin Elliott missed a last-minute scoring attempt. Or, the 2004 No Punt Game, when the Chiefs, seeded second in the AF, never stopped Peyton Manning. How about 2014, when they reduced their lead by 28 points in the third quarter?
"It's traumatic," said Homan. "I mean, it makes you want to scream and cry every time."
The situation was aggravated by the insistence of the chiefs on recruiting potential starting shifts through free transactions or contracts, and not by draft: Steve DeBerg in Montana, Rich Gannon to Elvis Grbac, Trent Green to Alex Smith, who coached Mahomes last season after the Chiefs' swap to take him to 10th place on Texas Tech.
Before Mahomes, the last quarterback proposed by the Chiefs to win a match for them was Todd Blackledge, in 1987. If Croyle, a third round pick in 2006, had won one of his 10 starts from 2007 to 2010, it could have been him.
For Patti DiPardo Livergood, Blackledge was the neighbor who was constantly leaving his Rottweiler shit in his garden. For many others, he represented what could have been; He was the second quarterback in the 1983 draft, ahead of Marino, Kelly and Ken O'Brien. She considers Mahomes as a singular star for this generation.
"It's an emotion we have never been able to appeal to," said DiPardo Livergood, who, like his late father, Tony, was director of the Chiefs Band. "Not since Lenny Dawson, it really does not belong to us. They brought in Montana, but it's not like now. He is ours. Patrick Mahomes is ours. It's like falling in love for the first time. "
At Raygun, a cheeky clothing store in the Crossroads neighborhood, a Mahomes-inspired paraphernalia greets visitors at the entrance. T-shirts bearing the inscription "Go Big Gold Go Mahomes" and bibs that proclaim: "I would like Patrick Mahomes to be my real dad. "
After the Steelers won Week 2, a man who had bought a Mahome jersey told an assistant director, Mary Newman, that it was better to order more. In just the first six weeks of this season, Raygun's sales in Chiefs clothing have tripled compared to last season, and the t-shirt "Patrick Is Mahomey" is the company's bestseller.
"I think our city thinks that the more we embrace it, the more it will move forward," said Anthony Oropeza, 49. a graphic designer and web designer from Roeland Park, Kan.
Wearing a Royals hat in his basement studio, where a painting of Mahomes was awaiting completion, Oropeza said that he thought Mahomes was already more popular than the catalysts of his work. Royals team that had boosted the city by throwing itself into consecutive World Series, losing in 2014 in 2015. Mahomes bridges between these eras, the decline of the Royals and the rise of the Chiefs, a singular star that, in the background of football, did what Bo Jackson did when he climbed field walls and clubbed 500-foot circuits here 30 years ago. since.
"It's important to note that, if you miss them, you go a little," Where was I? ", Said ESPN analyst Louis Riddick, about Mahomes in a phone interview. "That's why you'd better watch the whole game."
Or as Ashlock said about Mahomes: "It's not the equivalent of Angel Berroa."
"It's hard to continue to deny what you see and how you feel," said Harrison, the radio host.
Lucas said, "Whatever he does, he's easily the best quarterback of my life."
Lucas is 34, like Gaskins, who clenched his fist and bit his lip as Taylor completed his Mahomes tattoo.
"When you see him, dude," Taylor told him, "you will not care.
Finally, at 10:12, after 3 hours and 37 minutes (with a few small dotted breaks), Taylor tells Gaskins to sit down. He glanced at the picture of Mahomes who had guided Taylor, then at his tattoo, and then at the picture.
Walking slowly, he walked over to Taylor, who was sitting on a stool, and kissed him on the head. Thank you sincerely for a tattoo, whether Gaskins knows it or not, that he has been waiting for three decades.
Ben Shpigel is a sports journalist and has covered N.F.L. and the New York Jets since 2011. He also covered the New York Yankees and, before that, the Mets. He previously worked for the Dallas Morning News. @Benshpigel
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