Getty Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes.
After the Kansas City Chiefs had Patrick Mahomes II attempt 68 passes in Week 9, observers whispered fears about arm fatigue.
Mahomes, however, played down concerns when asked by reporters on November 9 whether he took measures to combat fatigue, including using a “pitch count” at practice.
“No, I don’t,” Mahomes said, calming the fan base. “Ever since I’ve been young, I’ve never really [gotten] sore, even when I pitched [in baseball].”
Confirmed: Mahomes is Iron Man. Kidding, but his casual response says it all.
Patrick Mahomes Just Trying to ‘Keep Rolling’
Mahomes’ 2022 workload is up in general because the Chiefs have had trouble running the football. Through eight games, he has made 331 pass attempts, or 41.4 per game. If he continues at that pace, he will finish the season with 704 attempts, far surpassing his career-high 658 attempts last season.
He leads the league in yardage and touchdowns, making him the MVP front-runner, but it’s also causing some nervousness. Mahomes, 27, doesn’t appear to be all that concerned.
“The normal stuff,” he continued in regard to his recovery process, “we do different stuff that I do with my trainers and stuff like that, but other than that I just try to keep that arm strength up and keep rolling.”
Mahomes Shows Respect to Jaguars, Trevor Lawrence
Mahomes also talked about his Week 10 opponent, the Jacksonville Jaguars. It will be the first time that Mahomes faces off against Trevor Lawrence, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2021 draft.
“Yeah, he’s super talented,” Mahomes said. “He’s young, so he’s made mistakes, but I think you see the talent week in and week out. He makes a lot of big-time throws, he can run the ball better than people think, and he’s someone that’s won on every level he’s been at.
“You can see they’ve kind of turned this around pretty quickly here,” he added about the Jacksonville organization as a whole. “They haven’t won the games but you can tell the team has gotten a lot better over this last year. We understand that it’s going to be a great challenge for us on both sides of the ball and that we’re going to have to play a great game in order to win.”
Part of what makes Mahomes so hard to beat is that he never seems to underestimate his opponent, no matter if they’re coming into the game undefeated, winless, or somewhere in between.
“[The Jaguars are] not going to sneak up on you,” the Chiefs QB praised earlier in the Q&A. “If you look at the tape, the players that they have out there are really legit players. I mean, they’re young, but they’re fast, they’re physical, they’re big, they fly around to the ball, they play with confidence.
“We have a ton of respect for this team coming in,” Mahomes said, giving zero pieces of bulletin board material for Jacksonville. “Even the games they’ve lost, they’ve been in [them]… If you watch the tape, it doesn’t show what their record looks like and I think guys understand that it’s going to be a heck of a football game and we’re going to have to play our best football to win.”