Andy Reid says Patrick Mahomes ‘couldn’t pay Alex enough’ for sharing his experience
MIAMI
Some think of Patrick Mahomes as a second-year quarterback. After all, he has accumulated nearly all of his statistics and all of his touchdown passes over the previous two NFL seasons.
But Mahomes is a third-year Chief, essentially using a redshirt season to begin his career in Kansas City. He was drafted in April 2017, went through organized team activities, training camp and spent the first 16 games of his rookie year on the bench.
That year wasn’t idle time. Far from it, and the Chiefs and Mahomes have credited a former member of the San Francisco 49ers, Sunday’s opponent in Super Bowl 54, for helping lay the foundation for the young quarterback’s career that already includes a NFL Most Valuable Player award.
“Alex Smith was phenomenal,” Chiefs coach Andy Reid said Tuesday.
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Simply, Smith helped Mahomes become a pro by accelerating the process.
“The person that he was, he taught me a ton,” Mahomes said. “How to go about the week and game plan, how to read coverages. He gave me little tips about how to read the front to see who is blitzing.
“Those little things I learned were invaluable. It’s stuff that can take you your full career to learn and he taught me that in my first year.”
that used to be the standard for new QB's ... sit and learn for a year (or more) behind someone able to teach and lead by example ... then everything changed where the new drafted rookie QB's are thrown onto the field as quickly as possible, learning be damned ... some thrived under that pressure, others had their careers ended before they really started
it would have been nice for Trubisky to have had the same first year experience as Mahomes did ... unfortunately, Mike Glennon was not up to the task