Patrick Mahomes: loss to Raiders was a wake-up call for the Chiefs

Appearing on 610Sports’ “The Drive” on Monday, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes shook off a suggestion that losing to the Las Vegas Raiders at Arrowhead Stadium on Sunday removed the additional pressure of a potential undefeated season. Instead, Mahomes characterized it simply as a wake-up call for his team.

“Obviously you want to win every single game you’re out there,” Mahomes told hosts Carrington Harrison and Sean Levine. “But it’s nice to kind of get this wake-up call that you can lose in this league any single week. We were kind of riding on that winning streak — it felt like we couldn’t lose to anybody — but now we know. And hopefully, it’s a good thing for us and not a bad thing.”

Even so, Mahomes wasn’t prepared to say that losing such a game was any more of a learning experience than any other.

“I don’t know if we learn more, but it’s definitely a learning experience,” he said. “Being able to go out there and not play our best football and not get a win, I think it’ll make guys come out this week with a different mentality — and we’ll be able to go out there and find a way to get a win.”

Mahomes said that he wasn’t worried about playing the upcoming road game against the Buffalo Bills at a bizarre time: 4 p.m. (Arrowhead Time) on Monday.

“We knew going into this season that stuff was going to get moved around; we knew that obviously there were going to be some positive tests,” he explained. “So just having that mentality of just being ready to go every single day; I think the team that has that mentality for the whole season will be the team that ends up winning at the end.”

And since the Chiefs will be facing Bills quarterback Josh Allen, there remains the question about whether Allen or Mahomes can throw the football farther — a challenge that Allen laid on the table just before the Chiefs played in the Super Bowl last February. Mahomes said he could throw it between 75 and 83 yards.

“I’ve never seen Josh Allen throw a football,” said Mahomes, “but I know how far I can throw it; I put it out there. If he can beat how far I can throw it, he’s got me.”

It seems unlikely that such a contest between them will happen anytime soon. For now, we’ll have to settle for Monday’s game.