Chiefs ‘We got it done!’: The inside story of how Patrick Mahomes landed with the Chiefs

Sassy Squatch · 01-09-2019, 03:17 PM

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sport...d-with-chiefs/

We got it done!’: The inside story of how Patrick Mahomes landed with the Chiefs

Sometime after the fall of 2015, Brett Veach, then the Kansas City Chiefs’ director of player personnel, was studying offensive linemen for the upcoming NFL draft. As Veach evaluated game film of Texas Tech offensive tackle Le’Raven Clark, another player on the screen distracted his focus. The Red Raiders’ sophomore quarterback made one unfathomable throw after another. He overcame his rawness with uncommon athleticism.

Those clips formed the basis of an obsession for Veach. And they were the Chiefs’ unofficial introduction to Patrick Mahomes.

On Saturday, Mahomes will continue his incandescent first season as Chiefs’ starting quarterback in a divisional round game against the Indianapolis Colts, both the NFL’s presumptive MVP and an avatar for the sport’s future. Mahomes passed for more than 5,000 yards and threw 50 touchdown passes, leading the Chiefs to 12 wins and the AFC’s top seed. His starburst, at age 23, made clear Mahomes could turn the Chiefs into an annual Super Bowl contender.

As Mahomes readies for his postseason debut, it is worth revisiting how the Chiefs landed perhaps the most valuable asset in professional football — and in the process kept him away from other pursuers. What began with Veach studying Clark ended with the Chiefs setting their course for 10 or 15 years. They traded two first-round picks and a third-round pick to move up to the 10th spot in the 2017 draft to poach Mahomes, then incubated him for his rookie season before unleashing him on the NFL. The process required personal connections, dogged pursuit, bold action and a little luck.

“This was a case of probably the perfect storm in a whole bunch of ways,” Mahomes’s agent Leigh Steinberg said in a phone interview.

“When I told him we work with Patrick, he was like, ‘Let’s slide out of here and talk a little bit,’” Cabott recalled in a phone interview.

Veach informed Cabott the Chiefs had grown enamored of Mahomes. At that point, Veach may have been talking out of turn. He loved Mahomes and believed, contrary to consensus, Mahomes was clearly the best quarterback available. But Veach had yet to cultivate the opinion throughout Kansas City’s organization.

In Cabott, Veach had a fellow Mahomes evangelist. Cabott discovered Mahomes while watching him play a bowl game as a freshman. He called a member of his agency’s board and said he had seen the best quarterback in the 2017 draft. He started cultivating a relationship with Mahomes’s family, eventually summoning the nerve to cold-call Mahomes’s mother, Randi, at work.

01-09-2019, 03:17 PM	Topic Starter
Sassy Squatch The man you could post like. Join Date: Oct 2010 Casino cash: $2419655	‘We got it done!’: The inside story of how Patrick Mahomes landed with the Chiefs https://www.washingtonpost.com/sport...d-with-chiefs/ We got it done!’: The inside story of how Patrick Mahomes landed with the Chiefs Sometime after the fall of 2015, Brett Veach, then the Kansas City Chiefs’ director of player personnel, was studying offensive linemen for the upcoming NFL draft. As Veach evaluated game film of Texas Tech offensive tackle Le’Raven Clark, another player on the screen distracted his focus. The Red Raiders’ sophomore quarterback made one unfathomable throw after another. He overcame his rawness with uncommon athleticism. Those clips formed the basis of an obsession for Veach. And they were the Chiefs’ unofficial introduction to Patrick Mahomes. On Saturday, Mahomes will continue his incandescent first season as Chiefs’ starting quarterback in a divisional round game against the Indianapolis Colts, both the NFL’s presumptive MVP and an avatar for the sport’s future. Mahomes passed for more than 5,000 yards and threw 50 touchdown passes, leading the Chiefs to 12 wins and the AFC’s top seed. His starburst, at age 23, made clear Mahomes could turn the Chiefs into an annual Super Bowl contender. As Mahomes readies for his postseason debut, it is worth revisiting how the Chiefs landed perhaps the most valuable asset in professional football — and in the process kept him away from other pursuers. What began with Veach studying Clark ended with the Chiefs setting their course for 10 or 15 years. They traded two first-round picks and a third-round pick to move up to the 10th spot in the 2017 draft to poach Mahomes, then incubated him for his rookie season before unleashing him on the NFL. The process required personal connections, dogged pursuit, bold action and a little luck. “This was a case of probably the perfect storm in a whole bunch of ways,” Mahomes’s agent Leigh Steinberg said in a phone interview. “When I told him we work with Patrick, he was like, ‘Let’s slide out of here and talk a little bit,’” Cabott recalled in a phone interview. Veach informed Cabott the Chiefs had grown enamored of Mahomes. At that point, Veach may have been talking out of turn. He loved Mahomes and believed, contrary to consensus, Mahomes was clearly the best quarterback available. But Veach had yet to cultivate the opinion throughout Kansas City’s organization. In Cabott, Veach had a fellow Mahomes evangelist. Cabott discovered Mahomes while watching him play a bowl game as a freshman. He called a member of his agency’s board and said he had seen the best quarterback in the 2017 draft. He started cultivating a relationship with Mahomes’s family, eventually summoning the nerve to cold-call Mahomes’s mother, Randi, at work.
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