Leave it to Patrick Mahomes to still achieve the remarkable even when he’s doing it out of frustration.
Most opt for a Rob Gronkowski-like spike when ticked off on a football field, but what does the Kansas City Chiefs quarterback do? He casually makes one of the flashiest plays of the pre-season on Saturday against the Detroit Lions, and one few others could even think about pulling off.
“Long story short, Travis (Kelce) didn’t run the route he was supposed to run and then it was kind of a behind-the-back pass because I was mad,” Mahomes said on the sidelines later in the game on the live television broadcast
“I was pissed off at Travis … out of spite I threw a behind-the-back pass.”
Mahomes might be the first to debut a mind-boggling highlight “out of spite.”
The back-to-back Super Bowl MVP is well-known for his ability to improvise, scrambling out of the pocket to make absurd throws downfield or fooling defenders with no-look passes. But he may have taken it to the next level with this one.
According to the broadcast, Mahomes had been working on these sorts of plays in practice earlier this week and head coach Andy Reid wanted to find a way to integrate these next-level passes into a real game.
It came on a clean play-action quarterback keep play, with Mahomes faking the hand-off and running to the flat for what looked like a screen pass to Rashee Rice. Instead, Kelce — opting not to run a flat-route as intended — slipped off his block into space and Mahomes casually flipped it to his trusty tight end for a never-before-seen, sleight-of-hand play.
“You know he’s got the voice thing … so he kind of mumbled out the play, I couldn’t hear it,” Kelce said on the broadcast. “I was walking up to the line, I was trying to decipher what was saying. Before I knew it, he snapped the ball. I kind of saw him out of my peripheral run to the sidelines so I was trying to go help my guy out. By the time I looked over there he was already in mid form like a photo on a sports card throwing the ball to me.
“So it was just I guess right place at the right time.”
As it always does when it comes to Mahomes’ magic, social media went crazy.