In Patrick Mahomes' short yet illustrious career, the Kansas City Chiefs quarterback has built up one heck of a postseason resume. After Sunday's road win over the Buffalo Bills in the Divisional Round, Mahomes' playoff career numbers looked like this: 13-3 record, 4,561 yards, 38 touchdowns, 7 interceptions, 443 rushing yards, and 5 rushing touchdowns, but this game in chilly Buffalo, New York was the first time Mahomes went into a hostile environment in the postseason. Those other fifteen games, Mahomes was playing in the friendly confines of Arrowhead Stadium or at the neutral site location of the Super Bowl. But heading into Sunday, Mahomes was chomping at the bit for the chance to experience the pressure and stakes of a road playoff game.
“He was the biggest advocate of anyone to go on the road and play. He was all for it. He wanted it,” Mahomes' teammate Marquez Valdes-Scantling said after the game, per Sam McDowell of the Kansas City Star. “He’s been the good guy of the league for awhile now, but he plays it’s cool — he loved being the villain.”
“You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become a villain.”
–Harvey Dent, The Dark Knight
It was not too long ago when it had become clear that Patrick Mahomes had overtaken Tom Brady and become the undisputed face of the National Football League. The Chiefs quarterback represented everything that the league could've wanted out of its marquee star: Mahomes was young, exciting, innovative, and hyper-competitive. He managed to stay out of trouble of any sort off the field and on the field he was making the game fun for the younger fanbase that the league was trying to attract in the era where attention spans are diminishing thanks to a social media epidemic that nobody is talking enough about. Mahomes had everything, and in his first five seasons as the Chiefs starting QB, Kansas City made the AFC Championship Game five times, made three trips to the Super Bowl, and hoisted the Lombardi Trophy twice.
It was at that point, when the Chiefs won the Super Bowl last February in a thriller over the Philadelphia Eagles, Patrick Mahomes had lived too long as the hero. He was now The Villain.
It's understandable that Mahomes would be the villain while playing in Buffalo. Just about any great player who is in the prime of their career is bound to be serenaded by a chorus of boos when they're playing a road game, and I know from first hand experience as someone who has gone to Buffalo rooting for a Bills opponent, those fans are not kind — even if you're a twelve year old kid who was wearing Bears apparel hoping to see Chicago get a win. But Mahomes' villainy is not exclusive to road venues.
Patrick Mahomes is treated differently than he once was. While analysts still marvel at Mahomes' uncanny ability to make throws from impossible angles and extend plays, now there's pushback on that sentiment. Every time a non-Mahomes quarterback makes a “Mahomes-esque” throw — you know the kind I'm talking about — and doesn't get the proper credit for it in the moment, you're bound to see someone complaining on Twitter about how if it were Patrick Mahomes who made that throw, the announcers would be losing their minds in the aftermath of the play.
There's also plenty of potentially warranted pushback regarding how Mahomes is officiated differently than most other quarterbacks in the league. As a fan of the Chicago Bears who has watched Justin Fields play an entire season without drawing a single personal foul penalty, I know firsthand how frustrating this could be. But this isn't Patrick Mahomes' fault. I'll continue to blame the incompetent officials until they start getting it right.
It's also not Patrick Mahomes' fault that all of the Dads, Brads and Chads out there decided that Taylor Swift's presence at Kansas City Chiefs games was the worst thing to happen to professional football in the 21st century. I don't even blame Mahomes for losing his mind earlier in the season when the Chiefs (rightfully) were penalized on a potential game-winning play against Buffalo because Kadarius Toney was lined up offsides. I played both football and basketball growing up, and I'd be a stone cold liar if I said I never got caught up in the moment and freaked the F out in the aftermath of a loss.
The only thing Patrick Mahomes is guilty of is being so damn good that nearly every non-Chiefs fanbase decided that from here on out that this team is public enemy number one. Kansas City is the modern-day NFL equivalent of the 90's New York Yankees, 00's Duke Basketball, or 2010-14 Miami Heat, and Mahomes is the poster boy of this perceived “evil,” like Derek Jeter, J.J. Redick, and LeBron James once were.
My advice to Mahomes would be to embrace the villain role a little more. You lived the life of the hero, now you can make a serious killing as the NFL's primary villain — no pun intended. The fans in Kansas City will continue to adore you, and in time, fans elsewhere will learn to appreciate you once again, because here's the hard truth that every NFL fan will have to face at some point…
“The world is more interesting with you in it.”
-Hannibal Lecter, The Silence of the Lambs
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