*Patrick Mahomes, on the phone from Texas, February 2024
* This is not one of the best interviews I’ve done, or most memorable. But it is the last I did of an active player for this column. It’s not like Mahomes will be the answer to a trivia question in the Peter King Career Trivia Game—but on this day, he was perfectly Mahomes.
I was trying to reach him in the wake of his third Super Bowl win, but a few things—my health, the shooting at the parade, Mahomes trying to live life, his daughter’s birthday—got in the way, and we did not connect till last Monday. I thought there was something that we talked about that explains Mahomes the person, the player and the competitor. The team-think, the singleness of purpose, the keeping the main thing the only thing, the single-mindedness …
Kansas City ball, fourth-and-one at the KC 34-, 6:05 left in OT, down three, timeout. Get stopped and the game’s over; you lose. Make the first down, and the game goes on.
“What happened during the timeout? What happened in the huddle?” I asked.
“I wish I could take all the credit, but it was kinda crazy,” Mahomes said. “We were going through our plays. We were trying to decide if we wanted to run or pass. We had a couple run plays dialed up. We were trying to find that perfect play. I was thinking of passes because I wanted to pass it obviously and have the ball in my hand. So MVS [Marquez Valdes-Scantling] came into the huddle on the side, and was like, ‘Hey let’s go with Slide T’s,’ which is wild because it’s not even a play designed for him. It’s really designed for Travis [Kelce] and Rashee [Rice]. When MVS said it, it clicked to me. I was like, ‘That’s it. That’s perfect.’”
“What does it mean?” I asked.
“What it means is kind of a bootleg play where I fake a run. I get on the perimeter and there’s a throw to Trav as he’s sliding across … and Rashee going across the middle trying to cause some disturbance, some interference-type stuff. I liked it because it gave me the option to throw to Travis, it gave me the option to throw it to Rashee, and it gave me the option to run. I told coach [Andy Reid], I was like let’s call this … I told coach, ‘If it’s not there I’m gonna run for it.’ He trusts us to go out there and call it … Once I kinda got outside and I saw room to run, I just went and got it.” Gain of eight. Game, saved.
“Do you recall thinking, ‘If we don’t make a yard, we lose the Super Bowl?’”
“I don’t,” Mahomes said. “I don’t think I thought about that at all. All I could think about was I told Trav if [defensive end Nick] Bosa comes up field I’m gonna drop it off to him and just hope. He’s gotta get the yard. The last thing I think I told Rashee was: ‘If it’s not there, you gotta find a way to get open.’ Then I was able to run for it. Got the first down, and kinda kept the chains rollin’.”
Three morals of the story:
1. Great players don’t clutter their minds with things like, If this doesn’t work, we lose! That cannot help Mahomes make a play.
2. Great players listen to good ideas. Valdes-Scantling had one. Mahomes (and Reid, presumably) liked it. It worked.
3. Great players like having the ball in their hands on the biggest plays of the season. Didn’t we all think there was a good chance Mahomes would end up figuring a way to make the first down by himself?
What happened on this one play, and Mahomes’ cogent explanation of it, says so much about why he’s won three Super Bowls in his first six seasons starting in the NFL.
because both are retired.
Reading through my email and PMs here, I hate every team in the league. 
