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Over the past 5 years, football fans have gotten used to seeing Patrick Mahomes post gaudy numbers against defenses around the league.
Most of the time, he makes it look easy regardless of how tough that defense has been against every other quarterback in the league.
According to him, things weren’t always so easy.
Earlier this week, Mahomes appeared on the Kelce brothers’ show “New Heights” and revealed that a matchup against Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots during his first year as the Kansas City Chiefs’ starting quarterback changed the way he prepares for NFL games.
“Thanks Coach Belichick” 👀@PatrickMahomes explained how a first year matchup with the Patriots forever changed how he prepares for games pic.twitter.com/sRG9igKht1
— New Heights (@newheightshow) February 28, 2023
I played the Patriots in New England my first year, and they were doing like this weird, we call it like the 40 up front, where they don’t really have a true nose guard. They kind of have double splits. They have linebackers kind of playing like D linemen and some of that stuff. I remember being back there like, ‘I have no idea what to do to get these five guys blocked.’
And then ever since then, I mean thanks coach Belichick, because ever since then, dude, if the blitz protection plan isn’t perfect and I don’t feel perfect going into the game with it, I don’t feel prepared.
That game may have actually been proof that Patrick Mahomes doesn’t need to be all that prepared to shred a defense. Despite everything the Patriots threw at him that he felt unprepared for during that game in Foxborough, Mahomes and the Chiefs still managed to put up 40 points against a defense that would go on to win the Super Bowl later that season.
That was impressively just one of the five times that Mahomes and the Chiefs put up 40 points in his first season as a starting NFL quarterback.
Since then, it has become all too common of an occurrence for Mahomes to put up video game numbers against even some of the league’s best defense.
It looks like the rest of the league may have Bill Belichick to thank for that.