After the Kansas City Chiefs let Patrick Mahomes II attempt 68 passes in Week 9, outside observers around the NFL whispered fears of arm fatigue.
Mahomes’ workload for 2022 has generally increased because the Chiefs have struggled to manage football. That’s one of the main reasons the Superstar QB is leading most MVP picks at halftime in the regular season, but it’s also causing some jitters.
The basic theory is that like an MLB pitcher, Kansas City needs to be wary of the golden arm of their prized possession — though the signal caller, 27, doesn’t seem overly concerned.
During his Week 10 press conference on Nov. 9, reporters asked Mahomes if he was taking any action to combat this potential long-term problem, including a “pitch count” at practice.
“No, I haven’t,” Mahomes openly admitted, before reassuring the fanbase. “Since I was young, I’ve never really [gotten] sore even when I pitched [in baseball].“
Confirmed: Mahomes is Iron Man. Joking, but the gunslinger’s casual reaction really says it all.
“The normal stuff,” he continued in reference to his recovery process, “we do other stuff that I do with my sneakers and stuff like that, but other than that I’m just trying to keep that arm strength and keep going.”
It looks like all debates about arm fatigue aren’t stories in KC for now.
Later in the press, Mahomes discussed his upcoming opponent. The Chiefs will host the Jacksonville Jaguars in Week 10, which marks the first time “PM15” will face the 2021 pick overall.
“Yeah, he’s super talented,” Mahomes said of Jags QB Trevor Lawrence. “He’s young so he’s made mistakes but I think you see the talent week in and week out – he’s making a lot of big throws, he’s able to run the ball better than people think and he’s someone who does it all levels has been at.”
“You can see they turned this around pretty quickly,” he added of the Jacksonville organization as a whole. “They didn’t win the games but you can tell the team has gotten a lot better over the last year. We know it’s going to be a big challenge for us on both sides of the ball and we need to play a great game to win.”
Part of what makes Mahomes so hard to beat is that he never seems to underestimate his opponent, whether they come into the game undefeated, winless, or somewhere in between.
„[The Jaguars are] I’m 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 legitimate players. I mean, they’re young, but they’re fast, they’re physical, they’re big, they fly to the ball, they play with confidence.”
“We have a lot of respect for this team coming in,” Mahomes concluded, giving zero scraps of bulletin board material for Jacksonville. “Even the games they lost were there [them]… If you look at the tape it doesn’t show what their record is and I think the lads understand it’s going to be a hell of a game of football and we have to play our best football to win.”
