American Football
Patrick Mahomes silences Chiefs doubters: "Let’s just play football and handle it all out there"
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Patrick Mahomes enjoyed a phenomenal start to his NFL career, helping the Kansas City Chiefs win three Lombardi trophies in the first seven years of his career. But, after a season where his passing yards and touchdown numbers dipped and the Chiefs lost to the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LIX, some have questioned whether the signal-caller has peaked.
He's tired of hearing from the cynics.
"I feel like I’ve had to sit back and listen to people talk and talk," Mahomes told Kay Adams on the Up & Adams Show.
"I don't really want to talk about it. I just want to go out and show who we are as the Kansas City Chiefs."
Mahomes was asked to describe his mentality for the season ahead, with descriptions like "revenge tour" being floated around.
His frustration is somewhat understandable. Mahomes' production may have dipped last year, but when we consider the context surrounding his exploits, it suddenly becomes much harder to point the finger of blame in his direction.
- Rashee Rice, Mahomes' best wide receiver, suffered a season-ending injury just three games into the season.
- He was consistently hounded by opposing defenses; The Chiefs' offensive line allowed the sixth-most pressures in the league.
- He had to carry the offense; The Chiefs' ground game ranked 30th out of 32 teams with a meagre 3.7 yards per carry.
- The Chiefs had a rotating cast of wide receivers. Mahomes' leading three were Xavier Worthy, a rookie still learning his craft, 33-year-old DeAndre Hopkins, who is two years removed from his best, and JuJu Smith-Schuster, who has generally disappointed since peaking in 2018.
Some may point to how Mahomes still had Travis Kelce at his disposal, but at 35 years old, the once dominant tight end has declined.
Those odds would undoubtedly scupper most teams' chances of even making the postseason. Yet, six months ago, after somehow guiding the Chiefs to a 15-2 record, Mahomes inspired them to statement wins over the Houston Texans in the Divisional Round and the Buffalo Bills in the Conference Championship, and he stood on the precipice of winning an unprecedented three-peat.
No player is above being questioned, but after guiding his team to three Super Bowls in the last six years, perhaps Mahomes deserves a certain amount of latitude in a sport where there are no cup finals, no European qualification, and 31 of the 32 teams go home disappointed every year.
Mahomes has a chance to shut down the naysayers in 2025, and really, would we put it beyond him and the re-tooled Chiefs using their 'failure' in 2024 as motivation to win another Lombardi trophy? The 29-year-old doesn't seem to want to discuss that either, telling Adams that he wants his game to do the talking:
"Let’s just play football and just handle it all out there."
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