Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes has found plenty of ways to astound and amaze football fans in two seasons as a starter. On the very biggest stage in all of sports, Mahomes may be pulling yet another rabbit out of his hat.
According to James Palmer of NFL Network, Mahomes has a behind-the-back throw that he’d like to use in a game.
"[Mahomes] tries it all the time because he keeps lobbying for Coach Reid to put it in the system,” Chiefs quarterback Chad Henne told Palmer. “He tells Coach Reid, ‘I can option this way and then throw it back this way’, and I’m like, ‘Ahhh, let’s just take care of the ball.’”
The thing about Mahomes is that, even when he’s working his special brand of magic, he still takes care of the ball. He knows the limits of his uncanny physical abilities, and he rarely if ever tries to go beyond them.
So would he dare to attempt a behind-the-back throw?
“I think he’s got a little trick up his sleeve, but I don’t want to spoil nothing,” receiver Demarcus Robinson told Palmer, laughing as Robinson said it. “He can get it down field a good 20 yards [behind his back] and he’s pretty accurate, too, honestly.”
Mahomes has built up plenty of equity through 35 NFL starts to try whatever he wants to try, because almost every time he tries something, it works.
“He has an unbelievable ability to manipulate the football,” quarterbacks coach Mike Kafka told Palmer. “He works it. He tries to tick me off with some of that stuff. If it happened in a game, it better be complete.”
Chances are that, given his success with a left-handed pass and a no-look pass and a sidearm pass and a full sprint to the left cross body bomb to the right and a broken-field run through dumbstruck defenders who didn’t know what to do and everything else this grown-ass-man-among-preschoolers has mastered, it would be complete, if he chooses to try to throw it that way.