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When a coach realizes his quarterback could be the greatest of all time, it should be a feeling of pure joy, right?
Not in the case of the Kansas City Chiefs' Patrick Mahomes.
"It makes it so much more stressful," Chiefs passing game coordinator Joe Bleymaier told ESPN on Wednesday of Super Bowl week. "You feel the burden as a coach and as you're putting a game plan together to not waste his abilities. To not go through a season where you don't give him the opportunity. To not screw it up as the coaching staff. So rather than feeling like this just unbridled excitement that we could do anything, it's actually more like a terror, like we cannot be the reason that we screwed this guy up or this team up."
Every week when Bleymaier puts together the game plan with coach Andy Reid, offensive coordinator Matt Nagy and the Chiefs staff, he wonders, "Are we utilizing him the best? Are we giving him the stuff that he needs? It's just constantly second-guessing ourselves just so that he has everything he needs to go be himself."
That burden weighed heavily on many of the Chiefs' players after a 40-22 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles in the silent and stuffy Super Bowl LIX postgame locker room Sunday night. Mahomes, who threw a pick-six in the first half, told the players at halftime that he needed to play better, according to Leo Chenal. The linebacker said he could hear in Mahomes' voice how much he was hurting by not playing up to his own standard.
"He demanded better of himself. And guys all around him were like, 'We need to be better for you, too, Patrick,'" Chenal said.
But the motivation of supporting a dynasty-building quarterback wasn't enough to overcome a 24-0 first-half deficit. The Chiefs fell short of making NFL history with a third straight title and wallowed in the shock of it.
Receiver DeAndre Hopkins slouched with his eyes closed as he rode down the concourse in a golf cart. Tight end Travis Kelce spoke to reporters for a quick two minutes before turning his back. Receivers JuJu Smith-Schuster and Hollywood Brown sat facing their lockers with their heads bowed, their upper bodies fully bent in half. Offensive lineman Joe Thuney wiped blood off his right calf.
As soon as Mahomes said it out loud last season after the Chiefs' second consecutive Super Bowl win -- "No one's ever got three. I want to go back-to-back-to-back," the NFL Films crew caught him saying to Chris Jones -- a three-peat seemed inevitable. But even the greatest quarterback can be rendered powerless when under siege by the league's deepest pass rush.
Kansas City's offensive line had held together until the most important game, when it faced the opponent whose roster is built around offensive and defensive line play. Thuney, one of the best guards in football, had filled in nobly at left tackle since Week 15, playing the role because Kansas City's younger tackles needed more time to develop. When Reid suggested moving the All-Pro left guard over to left tackle, offensive line coach Andy Heck wasn't sold on the idea. They'd be sacrificing on the interior and asking Thuney to do a very different job, out in space battling the best edge rushers.
CHIEFS COACHES SAID Mahomes never talked about the three-peat in a team setting, but away from the Chiefs facility, in sessions with his personal trainer, Bobby Stroupe, Mahomes did voice the prospect of a three-peat multiple times. "I get to hear unfiltered Patrick every Monday," Stroupe said during Super Bowl week.
Stroupe has trained Mahomes since the quarterback was 10 years old, and typically Stroupe plays the role of the antagonizer. Remember Burrowhead. Don't forget how the Bengals made you feel.
"Whatever is getting to him, that's what I'm going to talk about when the workout is tough," Stroupe said.
Like the time during the 2022 postseason, before the Chiefs won their first of back-to-back titles, when Mahomes had a severe high ankle sprain and Stroupe said the quarterback was in excruciating pain and close to throwing up while he had him farmer-carry a 400-pound hex weight bar.
But that negative bulletin-board material felt "old hat" this year, Stroupe said. "Whatever the latest Bengal is saying, we're just kind of over it. But you've got to grip something."
So Mahomes gripped something weightier and more solid than a flimsy insult. Stroupe said Mahomes started talking about his goal of winning three straight during OTAs this past offseason. And specifically the idea of the three-peat as a legacy.
"Everybody wants to win a Super Bowl when they get to it," Stroupe said last week. "But this one, this means something, and it means something that for him is better than anything individual. I think he wants more than anything for this team to be known as the best team of all time.
"When I'm whooping his ass, that's the thing he's been going to. This year, it shifted pretty quick to 'We got a chance of legacy here with this team.'"
Stroupe said Mahomes told him at one of his last workouts during the bye week before the Super Bowl that because no other NFL team had completed a three-peat, doing so would put the Chiefs on a higher tier of dynasty.
In past years, Stroupe finished a workout with Mahomes by reminding him to stay open-minded to the result, with the goal of playing his best football. Not this year.
"For him to bring [the three-peat] up, it's just really uncommon for him," Stroupe said. "It was just a different response."
Originally Posted by FloridaMan88:
The past was great (although you have to go to back to 2022 to when the offense was actually “great”)… so don’t evolve/adapt for the future.
Talk about being a “prisoner of the moment”.
I've praised this run like 20 times since the game but Clown Boy just makes shit up. [Reply]
Originally Posted by FloridaMan88:
The past was great (although you have to go to back to 2022 to when the offense was actually “great”)… so don’t evolve/adapt for the future.
Talk about being a “prisoner of the moment”.
Is it easy to run a west coast offense when your top two receivers aren’t in the system and your LT isn’t playing at an NFL level? How would other coaches have done? [Reply]
Originally Posted by TwistedChief:
We were 17-2 in games this past year in contests where we tried. Many of which we lacked a functional OL.
Please compare that to prior years and document the degradation of Reid’s abilities so we can discuss that point.
Offense sucked. Mahomes was exceptional late in the games and on 3rd down this year which saved the pedestrian playcalling and enhanced our record. [Reply]
Originally Posted by MahomesMagic:
Offense sucked. Mahomes was exceptional late in the games and on 3rd down this year which saved the pedestrian playcalling and enhanced our record.
Walk me through how that was a function of Reid and not the OL and the receiving options. [Reply]
Originally Posted by TwistedChief:
Walk me through how that was a function of Reid and not the OL and the receiving options.
Well you claimed in 2023 that Toney, or Justin Watson, or Sky Moore as a top WR option was fine.
So having a 1st round pick in Worthy, Juju, Hopkins, and fan favorite Justin Watson was more than enough weapons by that standard.
The revolving door at LT certainly hurt the offense but can't be only reason for the mediocre offense. We had everyone else on offensive line healthy and coaching can slide people to help even a shit LT. [Reply]
Originally Posted by TwistedChief:
Is it easy to run a west coast offense when your top two receivers aren’t in the system and your LT isn’t playing at an NFL level? How would other coaches have done?
Whose fault was it that the Chiefs went into a season with two LT’s who were incapable of playing at an NFL level?
Also do you think that fixing the LT position and getting a healthy Rice back are all that’s needed to return this offense to an elite level? [Reply]
Originally Posted by MahomesMagic:
Well you claimed in 2023 that Toney, or Justin Watson, or Sky Moore as a top WR option was fine.
So having a 1st round pick in Worthy, Juju, Hopkins, and fan favorite Justin Watson was more than enough weapons by that standard.
The revolving door at LT certainly hurt the offense but can't be only reason for the mediocre offense. We had everyone else on offensive line healthy and coaching can slide people to help even a shit LT.
I claimed in 2023 that this team could win a SB with that WR corps. They did. You felt otherwise and were proven wrong.
They barely won a SB last year. They barely lost a SB this year. Let's not pretend that you're not just swinging wildly on a narrative based on a single game's outcome. [Reply]
Could be a coincidence that the 2 years Bleymaier and Nagy are here they represent the 2 worst years of Mahomes careers. Could also be that Reid's offense has gotten stale.
With that being said no doubt in my mind now that the pressure of a 3-peat got to him and the team. They played tight while the Eagles played like they had nothing to lose. [Reply]
Originally Posted by dirk digler:
Could be a coincidence that the 2 years Bleymaier and Nagy are here they represent the 2 worst years of Mahomes careers. Could also be that Reid's offense has gotten stale.
We just fucking scored 32 points in the AFC Championship game with no left tackle. :-)
Some of you REALLY gotta pump the brakes. The biggest failures of the last two seasons are on lack of talent, not coaching. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Hammock Parties:
We just fucking scored 32 points in the AFC Championship game with no left tackle. :-)
Some of you REALLY gotta pump the brakes. The biggest failures of the last two seasons are on lack of talent, not coaching.
You can flip that argument around and say we had good enough talent to make it to the SB 3 years in a row, winning 2 of them.
Not going to disagree that talent is an issue but so could coaching. We have watched this team struggle offensively for 2 years, especially this year where each game was a knife fight.
But going back to what I said, the last 2 years have been the worst of Pat's career some of it is talent but I really believe they have turned him into Alex Smith. I want the 2018 Mahomes back. [Reply]
See i felt like mahomes Twitter apology was written in a way that seemed like relief...like he failed and could breathe again. It didn't sound as disappointed as I would have expected... just sorry but glad it's over.
Maybe next year pat can just let it rip again. He doesn't owe us any apology. He's given us all the best years of chiefs football we've ever seen. [Reply]
Originally Posted by dirk digler:
Could be a coincidence that the 2 years Bleymaier and Nagy are here they represent the 2 worst years of Mahomes careers. Could also be that Reid's offense has gotten stale.
With that being said no doubt in my mind now that the pressure of a 3-peat got to him and the team. They played tight while the Eagles played like they had nothing to lose.
Yeah, I don't get how he has such an awesome year in 22 and then looked...not bad but not like he usually does in 23.
