Patrick Mahomes

Patrick Mahomes (born September 17, 1995, Tyler, Texas, U.S.) is an American football quarterback who is one of the premier players in the National Football League (NFL). In his second season as a professional (2018), he was named the NFL’s most valuable player (MVP), and he later led the Kansas City Chiefs to victory in Super Bowls LIV (2020), LVII (2023), and LVIII (2024); he was named MVP of all three games. In the 2022 season Mahomes won his second NFL MVP award.

(Read Walter Camp’s 1903 Britannica essay on inventing American football.)

Early life and college football career

Mahomes grew up mostly in Tyler, Texas, with his white mother after she and his Black father separated when their son was six years old. His father, Pat Mahomes, was a professional baseball pitcher—a middle-inning reliever—who played 11 seasons in the major leagues with the Minnesota Twins, Boston Red Sox, New York Mets, Texas Rangers, Chicago Cubs, and Pittsburgh Pirates. As a child, the younger Mahomes often accompanied his father to the ballpark, where he received playing tips from the likes of Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter. Former major league pitcher LaTroy Hawkins was his godfather.

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Having shown himself to be a gifted athlete with a strong throwing arm even in boyhood, Mahomes starred in three sports at Whitehouse High School (near Tyler). He stood out as a basketball player and excelled at an even higher level in baseball and football. As a pitcher in his senior year, he employed a 93-mile-per-hour fastball to compile a 23–8 record and to throw a 16-strikeout no-hitter, and he batted .450 on the way to being rated the number 35 overall prospect in Texas. As a quarterback during his senior season, he threw for 4,619 yards and 50 touchdowns and rushed for nearly 1,000 yards. The college sports recruiting website MaxPreps named Mahomes 2013–14 Male Athlete of the Year. Although he was picked in the 37th round of the 2014 Major League Baseball draft by the Detroit Tigers, Mahomes chose to play football at Texas Tech University, one of only three Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) programs to offer him a scholarship (likely because, as a multisport athlete, he had not gained attention by attending any of the elite football camps).

At Texas Tech Mahomes made one disastrous pitching appearance for the baseball team and gave up the sport after his freshman year. Football was a very different story. By his sophomore year the 6-foot 3-inch (1.91-meter) 230-pound (104-kg) Mahomes had become one of the leading passers in the country and the fifth quarterback in FBS history to pass for 4,000 yards and 30 touchdowns and also rush for at least 450 yards and 10 touchdowns in one season. In 2016, as a junior, he led the FBS in passing yardage, throwing for 5,052 yards, and in total yards gained, passing and rushing for 5,337 yards, and he was awarded the Sammy Baugh Trophy for being the best passer in college football. That same year Mahomes, a marketing major and an excellent student, was named a second-team Academic All-American by the College Sports Information Directors of America and was recognized as the Big 12 Conference’s Football Scholar-Athlete of the Year.

Professional football career

Foregoing his senior year, Mahomes entered the 2017 NFL draft, in which the Kansas City Chiefs selected him in the first round with the 10th overall pick, having traded up to acquire him. The Chiefs had sky-high expectations for him (General Manager Brett Veach called him “one of the best players I’ve ever seen”), but, as backup for starting quarterback Alex Smith, Mahomes played little during his rookie season. When Smith was traded to the Washington Redskins (now Commanders) at the end of the 2017 season, however, Mahomes became the starter. In 2018 he more than lived up to the hype, passing for 5,097 yards and 50 touchdowns and thus becoming the second player (after Peyton Manning) in NFL history to throw for 5,000 or more yards and at least 50 touchdowns in a single season. With Mahomes at the helm of their potent offense, the Chiefs took a 12–4 regular-season record into the playoffs and advanced to the American Football Conference (AFC) Championship Game but lost to the Tom Brady-led New England Patriots in overtime. Mahomes’s wildly prolific season earned him not only Pro Bowl and first-team All-Pro honors but also, at age 23, the league’s MVP title.

In 2019 a dislocated kneecap kept Mahomes out of the Chiefs lineup for two games at mid-season. Still, he stewarded the team to another 12–4 record and a return appearance in the AFC Championship Game, in which he threw three touchdown passes to lead the Chiefs to a 35–24 victory over the Tennessee Titans and on to their first Super Bowl appearance in 50 years. Mahomes struggled initially in Super Bowl LIV, throwing two interceptions as the Chiefs trailed the San Francisco 49ers by 10 points in the second half. In the fourth quarter, however, he turned the game around, throwing for touchdowns on two successive drives to guide the Chiefs to an eventual 31–20 win. Having completed 26 of 42 passes for 286 yards and rushed for a touchdown (in addition to making those two scoring throws), Mahomes received the Super Bowl MVP award, becoming the youngest quarterback ever to be so honored. During the following off-season he was rewarded with a 10-year contract extension worth some $503 million, which was the most lucrative agreement to date in the history of American professional sports.

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The next season, Mahomes passed for 4,740 yards (second in the NFL) in guiding the Chiefs to a league-best 14 regular-season victories. Once again, during the postseason they played their way to the Super Bowl, where Mahomes faced off again with Brady, this time quarterbacking for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. A stout Buccaneers defense kept Mahomes mostly in check, and Tampa Bay prevailed 31–9. In the 2021 season Mahomes racked up 37 touchdown passes and 4,839 passing yards (fourth in the NFL) as the Chiefs, with a 12–5 record, finished first in the AFC West Division. Their march through the playoffs culminated in the hotly contested AFC Championship Game, which resulted in a 27–24 overtime loss to the Cincinnati Bengals. Mahomes had completed 26 of 39 passes for 275 yards and three touchdowns but had also tossed a pair of costly interceptions.

Mahomes had another standout season in 2022, passing for a career-best 5,250 yards and winning the league’s MVP award. In the divisional round of the playoffs, Mahomes overcame an ankle injury to help Kansas City defeat the Jacksonville Jaguars. The AFC Championship Game was a rematch with the Bengals, and the Chiefs won on a last-second field goal. Kansas City advanced to the Super Bowl, where the team faced the Philadelphia Eagles. Despite reinjuring his ankle, Mahomes led the Chiefs to a comeback victory, 38–35, and won his second Super Bowl MVP award.

The following season he helped the team solidify its dynasty status. Despite losing five of eight games during a stretch of the regular season, the Chiefs made the playoffs, where Mahomes led the team past the Miami Dolphins, Buffalo Bills, and Baltimore Ravens into a rematch of Super Bowl LIV against the 49ers. After being down 10–3 at halftime of Super Bowl LVIII, the Chiefs battled back to even the score at 19 by the end of regulation. The 49ers scored a field goal on the first possession in overtime, but Mahomes then calmly engineered a drive that culminated with his throwing a three-yard touchdown pass to Mecole Hardman that gave the Chiefs a nail-biting 25–22 victory and made them the first back-to-back Super Bowl champions since the Patriots in 2005. Mahomes completed 34 of 46 passes for 333 yards and two touchdowns, earning his third Super Bowl MVP award. In the process he joined Brady and Joe Montana as the only quarterbacks to have won at least three Super Bowl MVP awards.

In compiling his remarkable accomplishments on the football field, Mahomes employed an extraordinary skill set, including athleticism, uncanny elusiveness, and rugged running ability, which made him hard to bring down or confine in the pocket; wide razor-sharp field awareness, which allowed him to improvise freely; and a cannon right arm that was among the strongest in the NFL. Beyond having a strong arm, Mahomes released his passes at an array of angles, which might have been related to his baseball experience. Sometimes he looked like a second baseman turning a double play, sometimes he seemed to merely flick his wrist. At other times he threw across his body, made no-look passes like a point guard, or even resorted to throwing with his left hand. More than one observer noted that he simply played the quarterback position unlike anyone who had come before him.

Off the field, Mahomes proved to be an engaged social justice advocate. In 2020, in the wake of the killing of Black American George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, he joined a group of other prominent Black football players in making a video that challenged the NFL to condemn racism. Mahomes also threw his support to basketball icon LeBron James’s More Than a Vote, an effort to combat voter suppression and increase voter registration. In 2019 Mahomes established the 15 and the Mahomies nonprofit foundation, which was dedicated to improving the lives of children in underserved communities. In addition, he put his marketing studies to use as a popular pitchman for a range of products and became part owner of both Major League Baseball’s Kansas City Royals and Major League Soccer’s Sporting Kansas City. Time magazine listed Mahomes among the 100 Most Influential People of 2020. In 2022 he married his high-school sweetheart and longtime partner, Brittany Matthews.