Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes hugs his dad before a game against the Los Angeles Chargers on September 26, 2021.
CNN —
Patrick Mahomes can do almost anything.
From throwing tight spirals at any angle to any location on the NFL field to winning Super Bowl and MVP titles, the world is his oyster.
One thing though that he hasn’t been able to do as of yet is develop the eye-popping muscles some of his football contemporaries have.
And that was rammed home to Mahomes after a post from the official NFL Instagram from the Kansas City Chiefs’ locker room following their victory over the Baltimore Ravens in the AFC Championship Game showed a topless Mahomes speaking to his teammates.
The 28-year-old’s unassuming physique – a sharp contradiction to his other-worldly abilities with the ball in his hands – was the subject of fun on social media, so much so that Mahomes himself commented on it.
“Yoooo why they have to do me like that!?!?!? #DadBodSZN,” he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Now, Mahomes’ dad, Pat Mahomes, admits he has to take some credit for it, while also backing up his son’s work ethic.
“Patrick works really hard, he’s at the gym all the time, he works out three times a week,” said on “CNN This Morning” on Thursday. “He’s unfortunate, he got that from me too, that’s in his DNA.
“We just don’t get the muscles like DK Metcalf and some of the guys who are built likes rocks and statues. We’ve just got this natural ‘dad bod’ and, hey, we’re representing.”
Supportive role
Pat Mahomes knows what it’s like to compete as a professional athlete: the two-time NFL MVP’s dad is a former Major League Baseball pitcher who had stints across the US and in Japan during his time as a player.
So when it came to raising a son who showed promise as an athlete from early on, he was uniquely placed to provide an appropriate guiding hand.
Mahomes Sr. pitches for the New York Mets in a spring training game against the St. Louis Cardinals in 2000.
The 53-year-old describes Mahomes’ sporting abilities at a young age as “special.”
“The things he was doing at such a young age, I knew that was different. I knew that was special and I knew that if he continued to move in that fashion and to continue working every day that he’d have a chance to be a professional athlete,” Mahomes Sr. said.
“I mean, I’ve never seen a kid that worked as hard as he did, that grinded every day to try to make himself better, like he says, each and every day. It was just crazy. We would be out just shooting baskets at 10 to 11 p.m. at night and I would tell him: ‘Ain’t nobody out here working but me, you and Michael Jordan. We’re the only three guys that are working and trying to get better.’ And he took it and he ran with it and for him to get to the pinnacle of where he is now is just outstanding.”
All that hard work has clearly paid off, with Mahomes’ unique skillset pushing the Chiefs to new heights and turning himself into the face of the NFL since Tom Brady’s retirement.
On February 11, his Chiefs will face the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas, Nevada – the fourth time the team has reached the season-ending game of the NFL season since the native Texan became a starter.
It’s been a remarkable run with Mahomes at the helm for Kansas City, with himself, head coach Andy Reid and Travis Kelce forming an almost unstoppable combination.
Mahomes walks out for warmups prior to the AFC championship game against the Baltimore Ravens at M&T Bank Stadium on January 28.
And for Mahomes Sr., who says he will be attendance in Las Vegas to see if his son can win his third Super Bowl ring, it’s quite the experience seeing his son achieve all he has so far.
“To compete at the highest level is something that is rare and very special. For him to have the amount of success that he’s had this early on in his career is just surreal,” he told CNN.
“It’s kind of crazy. I really haven’t ever seen anything like him. I’ve been around a lot of great athletes – in (Alex Rodriguez) and Rickey Henderson and all these guys – but to be at the top of your game so quickly and continue to repeat it year after year, it just makes it that much more special.”
