Three Super Bowl titles in five years. Six AFC championship game appearances in as many years as an NFL starter. A tone-setter for the team to the point where Andy Reid literally farms the first two weeks of the offseason program out to Mahomes in Dallas. And there are still new ways every day Mahomes proves his worth.
We don’t need to rehash the Harrison Butker thing again here. It’s been covered. Everyone has their opinions on it. At this point, it’d be hard for anyone to move the topic forward.
But Mahomes somehow did.
“I know Harrison,” Mahomes said. “I’ve known him for seven years. I judge him by the character he shows every single day. And that’s a good person. That’s someone who cares about the people around him, cares about his family, and wants to make a good impact in society. When you’re in the locker room, there’s a lot of people from a lot of different areas of life, and they have a lot of different views on everything. And we’re not always gonna agree.
“There are certain things he said that I don’t necessarily agree with. But I understand the person that he is, and he’s trying to do whatever he can to lead people in the right direction. It might not be the same values that I have. But at the same time, I’m gonna judge him by the character that he shows every single day. And that’s a great person, and we’ll continue to move along and try to help build each other up to make ourselves better every single day.
“At the end of the day, we’re gonna try to come together as a team, and that’ll help out as well as eliminating those distractions outside the building.”
Mahomes backed his teammate. He struck a chord on how the rest of Butker’s teammates should handle the hysteria. He respected the opinions of all. The Chiefs can move forward after a situation that was, to say the least, sticky for people who had nothing to do with it.
Now, that doesn’t mean people have strong feelings about Butker’s comments. But at some point, someone from the roster was going to have to address it. You’d like to have the person be prominent, because what the 40th or 50th guy on the roster thinks isn’t going to move the needle much. So having someone such as Mahomes take the bull by the horns is how you’d draw it.
That Mahomes is so capable of doing so is a blessing for the Chiefs, another one they’ve gotten from No. 15 that isn’t lost to anyone over there.
“Pat’s similar to [Tom] Brady in that way,” said one veteran staffer. “He’s just got a knack for saying all the right things, and things that never cause any division in the locker room.”
In fact, at times like this, Mahomes does the opposite. And given how quickly the temperature rose during this particular situation, I think most folks with the team would agree that it’s yet another thing about Mahomes that you simply can’t put a price tag on.
