National Football League

How Patrick Mahomes' archival football knowledge is changing Chiefs offense

Updated Jul. 27, 2023 3:08 p.m. ET

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Henry McKenna

AFC East Reporter

Andy Reid did what he often does: He quizzed the room.

The longtime Chiefs head coach was leading his typical Wednesday meeting last season with quarterbacks Patrick Mahomes and Chad Henne and assistant coaches Eric Bieniemy and Matt Nagy.

And Reid asked: "Remember that play when…?"

Mahomes remembered. He always remembers. Mahomes remembers the play, the year, the week, the time on the clock, the opponent, the down and distance, the opposing coverage, the personnel. He can do that for pretty much every play he's ever run, whether it was for Kansas City or Texas Tech.

"We have so many damn plays. It's ridiculous that he can just regurgitate all that stuff and spit it out exactly," Henne said in an interview with FOX Sports.

Everyone knows about Mahomes' tremendous gifts on the football field: the arm strength, the creativity, the athleticism. Mahomes has wowed fans since taking over the Chiefs offense in 2018 with underhanded throws, no-look passes and an unparalleled jocularity at quarterback.  

But far fewer realize that Mahomes' mental makeup quietly matches that physical talent.

"His memory is amazing," Nagy, now K.C.'s offensive coordinator, told FOX Sports. "Nobody sees enough of what he does Monday to Saturday, with the work he puts in and how he studies. But the one other thing that he has that's rare is he could have three or four conversations at once and be locked in and detailed on all of them. It's just crazy."

Three or four conversations at once? I can barely hold one. 

Even more compelling is that Mahomes doesn't just remember the play or the game situation. He also has a good understanding of why he ran the play — and why he needed (or, in some cases, failed) to make adjustments. 

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"I think that's really important because then you fully understand the concept and fully understand the offense, the game plan," Chiefs quarterbacks coach David Girardi said. "[He understands] why we're doing what we're doing, and I think it allows him to get through progressions within a play. ‘If they give us this coverage, then I go here. If they give us this, then I go there.' 

"And having that knowledge and understanding of the full concept, which he has been phenomenal with since day one, [makes him] so intelligent within our scheme. The ‘Why' is very important."

Mahomes doesn't just seem to have studied the game film. He seems to have lived it over and over again to the point where he truly commits the play to memory.

And while most of us can't remember what we wrote in an email an hour ago, Mahomes can revisit every play in his career like an archive.

He often remembers plays the Chiefs ran when he was a rookie. He can identify plays that Kansas City has installed that resemble what he did with the Red Raiders in college. His profound understanding of the team's playbook seems to stem from his relentless and systematic approach during the week. 

Mahomes shows up every morning to his quarterback meeting with headphones on. He steps up to the whiteboard and starts to draw the concepts that they'll discuss that day. Mahomes maps out the plays and situations that the team has prepared for the upcoming matchup. He also works his way through the opponent's defensive personnel. And then he'll write down their weaknesses, their strengths. He'll write messages to himself like, "Use your feet this week." 

"The board is filled every week. It's something new every week. But at the same time, it's just the same process," Henne said.

Perhaps that's why, when the Chiefs actually run the play (and Mahomes studies it on film), it sticks in his mind. That said, he has also proven that he can memorize plays without even running them. Henne said he's never seen another quarterback take plays from a meeting room and then run them in an install to perfection with the regularity that Mahomes does it. It makes a coach's job easy … teaching a play once and seeing it run exactly as it's designed on the first go.

In an era when practice minutes are precious, Mahomes' talent for memorization can keep the Chiefs on schedule.

"He could teach our offense to any player rather than a coach being up in front of us," Henne said.

The coaches love the challenge of having an offensive coordinator at quarterback. Reid, in fact, has the exact same archival knowledge of his own playbook. Reid, Bieniemy and Mahomes would go back and forth at meetings in this memory game. They'd start rattling through their mental archives of the playbook, jumping from the play they ran on play 20 against the Cowboys in 2017 or play 14 against the Jets in 2020.

It can't be easy for Mahomes to keep up with these coaches. Reid, 65, has been the Chiefs' coach since 2013 and has been a head coach since 1999. Bieniemy, now the OC for the Commanders, has worked in this offense since 2013. Nagy has worked with Reid since 2008 except for his time as the Bears coach from 2018 to 2021.

"When you're in that quarterback room, they see everything, and it may not be stuff that you're looking for on tape, Bieniemy told FOX Sports. "I mean, as far as football, they see everything. Yeah, that's the fun in it. They see everything."

Want an example?

In preparation for Super Bowl LIV against San Francisco, Mahomes noticed the 49ers defensive ends crashing hard toward the middle of the pocket. So he pitched an idea for the opening play: a fake quarterback dive with a quick toss right. The idea was to make the crashing defensive ends think that they got it right — jumping on Mahomes' dive — only to get the ball out to the edge for a decent pickup. And that's exactly what happened: a seven-yard gain from running back Damien Williams. 

The broadcasters gave credit to Reid for the play. But it was all Mahomes. He designed the play and essentially called it.

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"I think I just love it," Mahomes said to explain his football acumen. "I love watching film. I love studying game plans. I love creating plays. Coach Reid does a good job of letting everyone in the building create plays. And so you never know where it's coming from, but we have guys that help create plays. We have coaches, obviously — the players, as well. And then there's seeing coverages.

"We were lucky enough to be a top offense since I've been in the league, so I've seen a ton of different coverages. It's cool that, now, I'll see coverages and blitzes from years past and I know what to get to because I got tricked by it the first time. … It's like learning a new subject every week in terms of the game plan."

Mahomes knows his playbook by heart. He knows the way Reid has tweaked and altered the playbook. So now, the quarterback has license to do the same — just like a coach might.

If a simple option pitch isn't flashy enough for you, then consider this: Mahomes is also the team's trick-play engineer. He and his teammates get time on Saturday to practice plays that range from silly to fully insane. But that was the proving ground for the team's viral ring-around-the-rosey play. Mahomes gets to design trick plays and run them with the offense. If all goes well, some of those plays make their way into the playbook for Sunday.

He's not just a living archive for Reid's system. He's also beginning to author his own chapter in Reid's playbook.

"He knows what I'm looking for and I know what he's looking for," Mahomes said. "To be able to talk with him almost non-verbal because we know each other so well, it's one of the advantages that we have on our team."

Yes, Mahomes' physical talents are transcendent. But there's a reason why he can get away with the passes that coaches instruct their players not to make. It's not just that he has rare arm strength and unique off-platform throwing power. It's also that he knows his playbook to the point where he has a next-level awareness comparable only to great quarterbacks like Tom Brady. In fact, Brady once said he "has all the answers to the test." He had an archival knowledge of New England's playbook — and how defenses would look when the Patriots ran each of the plays in the game plan.

Mahomes isn't quite there yet.

"There's still a couple times in a game where blitzes and stuff get me," Mahomes said when asked if he had all the answers to the test, like Brady did.

Maybe Mahomes is just being humble. But at age 27, he's logging all the data of every offensive series. If he doesn't have all the answers to the test, then he has most of them. After just six years in the league, Mahomes is already one of the greatest quarterbacks in the history of the game. He has two Super Bowl wins, two NFL MVPs and a career full of Hall of Fame-caliber highlights.

The more he sees, the more he learns. The more he memorizes, the more he dominates.

Prior to joining FOX Sports as the AFC East reporter, Henry McKenna spent seven years covering the Patriots for USA TODAY Sports Media Group and Boston Globe Media. Follow him on Twitter at @henrycmckenna.

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Henry McKenna