Patrick Mahomes II didn't want to be a quarterback. He wanted to play baseball. Of course he did. Pretty much every kid whose dad is a Major League Baseball player wants to be in the big leagues, too. Think of the sport’s astonishing list of Juniors—Ken Griffey Jr. and Vladimir Guerrero Jr., to name but a couple. Barry Bonds is the son of a ballplayer. In all there have been 259 sets of fathers and sons who have played Major League Baseball and countless more who came close.
Growing up, Mahomes seemed to be very much on the baseball path. His dad, Pat Mahomes, spent eleven years in the majors pitching for the Twins, Red Sox, Mets, and three other teams. Young Patrick’s earliest, and some of his fondest, memories are of going to the ballpark with his hero, wearing little team jerseys with pat on the back, playing catch with major leaguers, dreaming nightly of playing in the big leagues himself. “Baseball,” he says, “was everything to me.”
As he grew older, he flashed big-league baseball talent. He was one of the top high school players in Texas. And he was such a talented pitcher that the Detroit Tigers drafted him, even though he’d made it clear that he intended to become the first in his family to go to college.
So, what was it about football—and particularly being a quarterback—that grabbed him?
In the end, he just felt more like himself on the football field. “I think a big part of it was that playing quarterback felt creative to me,” says Mahomes. “I loved that creativity, making things happen. I grew up watching Aaron Rodgers; he was my guy, and he kind of broke the mold of how to play quarterback, with the different arm angles and the way he extended the play. Playing like that really appealed to me.”
In just five seasons as a starting quarterback in the NFL, Mahomes already has redefined the position. He’s led the Kansas City Chiefs to five consecutive AFC Championship Games, three Super Bowl appearances, and two Super Bowl victories. His career passer rating of 105.7 is the best in NFL history. He’s been named the league’s Most Valuable Player twice. But it is his wondrous style—the sidearm throws, the no-look passes, the improvisation he displays whenever he appears to be in trouble—that leaves even many of the game’s legendary players breathless.
Here’s a scary thought for everyone but Chiefs fans: Mahomes is still just twenty-eight. He could be at the peak of his quarterbacking skills for another decade, or more. Will he threaten Tom Brady’s career record of seven Super Bowl wins?
Mahomes does what the best sports innovators do. He borrows from the greats—Rodgers and Brett Favre and Randall Cunningham, among others—and adds just enough of his own to make it feel entirely new.
His creativity comes out on Sundays when he’s dodging defensive ends who run like wide receivers and decoding the exotic coverage schemes cooked up by opposing coaches. “They do a great job of taking away the base stuff that you have in your offense,” he says. “And then you are on your own, and it’s like, ‘Okay, let’s see how much fun we can have.’ ”
What's the future of the quarterback position? It's a topic Mahomes enjoys thinking about. “I think it will keep going in the direction it has been going, with quarterbacks getting more and more athletic and being able to improvise more and more,” he says. “You’re seeing all these guys come into the league who can go out there and keep the plays alive and make defenses pay by extending the play and making an off-balance throw and finding an open receiver.
“But where you really see it is in high school now. I watch a lot of high school football around Kansas City, and what I see now is completely different from how I think it was even back when I was in high school. You see teams embracing these NFL-type offenses and quarterbacks out there just doing incredible things when it looks like the play is dead.” One thing Mahomes would love to see is less specialization in youth sports. He understands that a lot of young players think they need to specialize to keep up and, later, to excel at a specific sport. And he’s careful not to discourage that. But he believes that playing different sports helps athletes learn to compete and find ways to win.
“So much of what I do is because I played baseball,” he says. “I was a shortstop, and out on the football field I’m doing exactly what I was doing as a shortstop. I’m hitting the first baseman in the chest. All those arm angles, throwing sidearm, underhand, against the body—all of that is stuff I did as a shortstop.
“But playing high school basketball also had a huge influence on the way I play. I was a point guard, and in many ways that’s exactly how I feel now. I’m still the point guard, trying to get the ball to people in space, get the ball to them in a position to score. In a lot of ways, it’s exactly the same thing.”
I ask him if he thinks the way he plays football will influence the next generation. “I hope so,” he says. “I think we all hope that we can have an impact on young people. But it’s more complicated than kids seeing me do some of the improvisational stuff and going, ‘Yeah, I want to throw underhand’ or whatever.”
Even Mahomes had a learning curve. “When I entered the league, the big question about me was could I do the traditional stuff, could I stand in the pocket and make all the throws? I had to prove that I could do that. I had to win some trust,” he says. He feels lucky to have had coaches who let him try things that others might not have. “And we’ve been successful. I wouldn’t be able to play the way I do if we weren’t successful.” Nothing builds a legacy like winning.
MAHOMES ON THREE OF HIS TOP QB RIVALS
Josh Allen of the Buffalo Bills
“He just has different ability. He’s able to run as well as he can throw from the pocket. But what makes him different is how big he is. He’s such a big guy, bigger than a lot of the guys who are trying to bring him down. He’s just so hard to tackle.”
Joe Burrow of the Cincinnati Bengals
“Joe used to be more traditional looking. He looked like someone who felt most comfortable throwing from inside the pocket. But he has an escapability that I don’t think we’ve seen in a long time. He reminds me a little bit of Tom [Brady] in that way. He’s faster than Tom and is a threat to run, but the thing that blows your mind about him is that you think you have him, and then he makes one little subtle move and he’s free and the ball’s out of his hands.”
Lamar Jackson of the Baltimore Ravens
“Lamar is incredible. He can make every throw, of course, and he’s also able to outrun defensive backs. There just haven’t been many quarterbacks like that. Michael Vick was like that. But Lamar is bigger and stronger; he’ll run over you, too.”
This article appeared in the 90th Anniversary issue of Esquire
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Joe Posnanski has been named the best sportswriter in America by five different organizations, including the Sports Media Hall of Fame and the Associated Press Sports Editors. He has also won two Sports Emmy Awards. He is the No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of six books, and he co-hosts the PosCast with television writer and creator Michael Schur.
