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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."
The lights were too bright and Mahomes didn't have time to relax, literally. All the pressure was on us and it was a nightmare result. It's hard to see us ever getting that opportunity back. [Reply]
Michael Jordan cracked mentally twice each time they three peated. Not that surprising Mahomes did as well. It's not human nature to put that much pressure on yourself [Reply]
who is Blemeiyer and why are we entrusting our game planning to him and Nagy? Can't Andy take charge of the coaching for once and not delegate super important stuff to morons? [Reply]
Originally Posted by htismaqe:
He screamed at them a lot. Whether or not that produced feelings of accountability in them is debatable.
Screaming is better than doing nothing, at least that can cause a little fear, I know that doing nothing allows people to run a muck, it's human nature. [Reply]
Originally Posted by dirk digler:
Reading this makes me wonder if Pat put alot of undue pressure on himself which may have caused him to press harder and not play his natural way.
It happens
Stroupe needs to go back to the bulletin board material as motivation.
And those coaches coaching scared? WTF? insert (You're fired) meme. [Reply]
I don't have a problem with being honest about your emotions. Kinda refreshing actually. Fear of failure can be a powerful motivator, too. It does, however, point towards the question of who is responsible for the less explosive, risk averse offense? Is it really all a talent level thing or is it tightness from the coaching staff translating to the field and Mahomes' play? The statements aren't disqualifying, but combined with the product on the field, they aren't great. [Reply]
According to his wikipedia page, Bleymaier is a former college teammate of Brett Veach. So the organizaiton has entrusted the super bowl game plan to two of Veach's buddies... [Reply]
