Patrick Mahomes has tied Tom Brady for the fastest quarterback to 100 wins, but the regular-season victory he treasures most came on a day he says he played poorly. It was Week 17 of 2019, a 31-21 Kansas City win over the Chargers. What stuck with him was the crowd reacting to a result in Miami that had nothing to do with the Chargers. The Dolphins had beaten the Patriots, and that sealed a playoff bye for the Chiefs. He shared the memory this week, with Kansas City 5-0 and a trip to Seattle ahead.
Patrick Mahomes names a 2019 win over the Chargers as his favorite
Reporters asked Mahomes whether any regular-season win stood out. He went straight to the Chargers game, and the score wasn’t the reason.“I didn’t even play that good of a game,” Mahomes said. Then he described what he did remember. “I remember being on the field, and it wasn’t even about us and me winning the game, but hearing the fans and how excited they were getting. You just knew subconsciously that the Patriots had lost and we were going to get that home-field in the playoffs.”Fans inside the stadium were tracking the Dolphins-Patriots game, because a Miami win handed Kansas City the No. 2 seed in the AFC. Back then, the first and second seeds both earned byes, a setup the NFL has since changed. CBS announcer Kevin Harlan famously called both games at once on television.That says something about him. Mahomes is 117-35 counting the postseason, and the game he loves most is one where his own performance hardly mattered. What he took from it was the sound of a crowd that had just learned a playoff bye was coming.
Seattle tests his composure on Sunday night
Next up is Seattle in Week 7 on Sunday Night Football. Mahomes has played there only once, a 38-31 loss in 2018.He remembers it as loud. He also remembers his own part in how it went. “I think I’ve only played there once, and it was Sunday night,” Mahomes said. “I remember it being very loud and them having a lot of passion. I might have been too amped up early in the game.”The lesson he took is simple. “I think that’s stuff you learn from as you go through your career. You got to be able to manage your emotions, and manage the entire emotion of the stadium. Just go out there and execute, especially early in games in an environment like this.”Both memories come down to a stadium full of noise. In 2019, it told him something good had happened. In 2018, it fed an energy he says he should have held back. Sunday night will tell him if the lesson stuck.