Mic'd Up Patrick Mahomes Reveals Why He Is Faster During Games Than He Is On Paper
Patrick Mahomes is not the fastest quarterback in the NFL, but you wouldn't know based on his elusiveness on Sundays. The 27-year-old is frequently dancing around in the backfield, shaking would-be tackles, and scampering for first downs and touchdowns when the pocket collapses.
Mahomes ran a 4.8-second 40-yard dash during the NFL Combine. It wasn't the worst result, but it does not come anywhere near the times of Michael Vick, Robert Griffin III, Justin Fields, or Lamar Jackson. It was even slower than Brock Purdy and Kenny Pickett last April.
And yet, you might think that Mahomes is in the same ballpark in terms of relative speed— or faster. It's something of an illusion, to where he is so much quicker on the field than he is in reality.
So what's Patrick Mahomes secret? Fear.
Mahomes was mic'd up during last weekend's game against the Seahawks, in which he scored a rushing touchdown late in the the fourth quarter. He scampered around the right side, brushed off a tackle near the goal line and dove for the pylon.
It was only a three-yard touchdown, but it was an extremely athletic three-yard touchdown.
On the sideline, one of Mahomes' teammates jabbed that Geno Smith was faster than he is. Mahomes agreed, but said that Smith does not run as scared as he does.
He said that when he is getting chased, the fear makes him faster and joked that he would have run a 4.4-second 40-yard dash at the NFL Combine if someone was on his tail.
Mahomes has been in the league since 2017. Over the course of his six-year career, in which he played just one game as a rookie, he has run the ball 292 times for an average of 5.2 yards per carry.
He can scoot. And his logic on running scared is pretty sound, considering that the alternative is getting crushed by a big defensive lineman or a downfield linebacker!