Patrick Mahomes is probably the most dynamic quarterback in the NFL. He’s a danger with his legs and makes throws few others can.
So how can he gets even more dangerous? By improving how well he reads defenses. That is a skill that Mahomes claims he only really picked up midway through the 2019 season.
“I didn’t understand how to read defenses until halfway through last year,” Mahomes said in an upcoming episode of HBO’s ‘The Shop: Uninterrupted.’ “I understood coverages but how to be able to pick up little tendencies defenses do … I was just playing. This year I could actually recognize more and more stuff and I think the more experience and the more I learn then I’ll be able to go out there and call plays and do that different stuff because I’ve seen it, and I still think there’s a long way for me to go there.”
Just for context, supposing Mahomes is telling the truth, he threw for 5,000 yards and 50 touchdowns in his first full NFL season without being able to read the finer points of an NFL defense.
Mahomes, it seems, has room to grow. He’s a Super Bowl champion at 24, and has a long way to go. By the sounds of it, we should expect him to be even better going forward as he gains experience like this. He definitely has the right coach to help him with things like this, too.
