DaFace
01-11-2019, 11:00 PM
Another good article from the Star today. Again, not a ton of new info, but a lot more depth than I've read before.
https://www.kansascity.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/vahe-gregorian/article224263285.html
When Andy met Patrick: the Reid-Mahomes summit that changed everything for the Chiefs
Before this beautiful and symbiotic and infinitely promising relationship between Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes began, before they could complete each other, there had to be a first date and, in this case, a matchmaker.
Sure, Reid had a fine sense of Mahomes’ breathtaking arm and the absurd range of ways he could make a play.
“Yeah,” Reid said with a laugh, “you can get that off tape.”
But Mahomes didn’t have Reid hooked at that intriguing-but-distant glance. Because it’s only a sliver of what it takes to play in the NFL … let alone be viewed as The Future for the Chiefs.
Enter general manager Brett Veach, then the team’s co-director of player personnel, who was infatuated with Mahomes and relentless in learning every … single … thing ... about him. Veach has said he’d seen Mahomes “play a bunch” — which turns out to be a hilarious understatement.
Just ask Chris Cabott, who co-represents Mahomes with Leigh Steinberg and told Terez Paylor of Yahoo Sports that “for like 94 straight days” before the draft, they had communicated with Veach in “some way, shape or form.”
And ask Reid, who hired Veach in Philadelphia and has worked with him for 12 years. With a certain gleam in his eye, Veach couldn’t emphasize enough that Mahomes was “special,” perhaps even transformational.
“Right from the get-go — for about a year and a half,” Reid said. “When Brett gets something like that, he’s going to let you know.”
Even so, Reid needed to learn first-hand about Mahomes and “his person,” as former Chiefs GM John Dorsey liked to say.
Everything that has unfolded since — Mahomes’ mesmerizing first season as a starter; the Chiefs earning the AFC No. 1 seed entering their divisional playoff game against Indianapolis on Saturday at Arrowhead Stadium — hinged on the pre-draft meeting in 2017.
As it happens, the session that Mahomes calls “a blessing” and “kind of the building block for the relationship that we have now” changed the prospects of the franchise.
“They had to be temperamentally suited … That consanguinity of interests, that meeting of the minds, that portent of the future, and what those meetings would be like between the two of them (going forward), there had to be a click that went off in Andy’s mind: ‘This is our guy,’ ” Steinberg said. “He could have come out of that meeting turned off, disbelieving, doubtful, ambivalent. But he didn’t.”
Anything but. Instead, Steinberg said, the Chiefs fell “in love” with Mahomes — as has a fan base.
To hear it recounted by the understated Reid, against whom no one should play poker, it wasn’t necessarily an instant eureka moment.
“Well,” he said, smiling, “we really liked him.”
As in, liked him liked him, that is. With some other quarterbacks who’d made pre-draft visits, Reid either was simply less impressed or had big doubts. In at least one instance, Veach told Sports Illustrated in August, Reid walked past Veach’s office and looked down as he swiped his hand from left to right to convey uh-uh.
At that point of his session with Mahomes, Reid might as well have been glowing as he passed. He grinned and gave Veach a thumbs up, Steinberg and Cabott each were told.
“I think if there was an extensive series of boxes to check off, one by one they got checked off,” said Steinberg, adding that from there, “All the stars aligned perfectly.”
(more at the link)
https://www.kansascity.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/vahe-gregorian/article224263285.html
When Andy met Patrick: the Reid-Mahomes summit that changed everything for the Chiefs
Before this beautiful and symbiotic and infinitely promising relationship between Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes began, before they could complete each other, there had to be a first date and, in this case, a matchmaker.
Sure, Reid had a fine sense of Mahomes’ breathtaking arm and the absurd range of ways he could make a play.
“Yeah,” Reid said with a laugh, “you can get that off tape.”
But Mahomes didn’t have Reid hooked at that intriguing-but-distant glance. Because it’s only a sliver of what it takes to play in the NFL … let alone be viewed as The Future for the Chiefs.
Enter general manager Brett Veach, then the team’s co-director of player personnel, who was infatuated with Mahomes and relentless in learning every … single … thing ... about him. Veach has said he’d seen Mahomes “play a bunch” — which turns out to be a hilarious understatement.
Just ask Chris Cabott, who co-represents Mahomes with Leigh Steinberg and told Terez Paylor of Yahoo Sports that “for like 94 straight days” before the draft, they had communicated with Veach in “some way, shape or form.”
And ask Reid, who hired Veach in Philadelphia and has worked with him for 12 years. With a certain gleam in his eye, Veach couldn’t emphasize enough that Mahomes was “special,” perhaps even transformational.
“Right from the get-go — for about a year and a half,” Reid said. “When Brett gets something like that, he’s going to let you know.”
Even so, Reid needed to learn first-hand about Mahomes and “his person,” as former Chiefs GM John Dorsey liked to say.
Everything that has unfolded since — Mahomes’ mesmerizing first season as a starter; the Chiefs earning the AFC No. 1 seed entering their divisional playoff game against Indianapolis on Saturday at Arrowhead Stadium — hinged on the pre-draft meeting in 2017.
As it happens, the session that Mahomes calls “a blessing” and “kind of the building block for the relationship that we have now” changed the prospects of the franchise.
“They had to be temperamentally suited … That consanguinity of interests, that meeting of the minds, that portent of the future, and what those meetings would be like between the two of them (going forward), there had to be a click that went off in Andy’s mind: ‘This is our guy,’ ” Steinberg said. “He could have come out of that meeting turned off, disbelieving, doubtful, ambivalent. But he didn’t.”
Anything but. Instead, Steinberg said, the Chiefs fell “in love” with Mahomes — as has a fan base.
To hear it recounted by the understated Reid, against whom no one should play poker, it wasn’t necessarily an instant eureka moment.
“Well,” he said, smiling, “we really liked him.”
As in, liked him liked him, that is. With some other quarterbacks who’d made pre-draft visits, Reid either was simply less impressed or had big doubts. In at least one instance, Veach told Sports Illustrated in August, Reid walked past Veach’s office and looked down as he swiped his hand from left to right to convey uh-uh.
At that point of his session with Mahomes, Reid might as well have been glowing as he passed. He grinned and gave Veach a thumbs up, Steinberg and Cabott each were told.
“I think if there was an extensive series of boxes to check off, one by one they got checked off,” said Steinberg, adding that from there, “All the stars aligned perfectly.”
(more at the link)