Patrick Mahomes not concerned about recovery after career-high 68 pass attempts

During Sunday’s 20-17 overtime victory over the Tennessee Titans, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes threw a career-high 68 passes. He completed 44 of those attempts for 446 yards, adding 63 yards rushing after frequent scrambles.

Speaking before Wednesday’s practice, the league’s best quarterback cited his baseball background, showing no concern about such a heavy workload.

“Ever since I’ve been young, I haven’t really gotten sore,” Mahomes claimed, “even when I pitched when I was younger. We do different stuff with my trainers and stuff like that. But other than that, I’m just trying to keep that arm strength up and keep rolling.”

Mahomes conceded that only 13 rushes by running backs is not ideal, and he expects the team to be more balanced in future games.

“I think we still do a good job of trying to mix it up,” he countered. “Obviously that game got a little out of hand as far as throwing the ball a little bit more than we wanted to — compared to running it. Something you have to deal with as an offense — to be able to succeed in this league — is being able to do both. That’s something I think we can do on this team.”

The Titans’ second-ranked rushing defense forced the Chiefs’ game script.

“It’s just the way their team’s built,” Mahomes observed. “Their d-line is a very good defensive line, especially against the run. They do a good job of being in the right gaps. Linebackers fly up and make plays. That day, they had a good game plan for our run game. We had to kind of use those shorter passes to get those yards. That’s just being able to be diverse as an offense. I think the only thing next is we’ve got to score some of those drives where we were getting those yards. That’s something we missed out on this last week.”

Head coach Andy Reid confirmed that the ineffectiveness of the running game played a factor.

“I knew we had a lot of plays, period,” Reid explained in Wednesday’s media conference . [Chiefs statistical analysis coordinator Mike Frazier] gives me a heads-up on all of those things during the game. We were going to do what we needed to do to try to win the game. That’s how we went about it. If the run game had been going, we would have done more of the run game. We had the pass game going a little bit. You’re in a game, and you’re sitting there trying to score touchdowns.”

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Part of going for the win was trusting Mahomes’ arm to an unprecedented degree. The quarterback believes he did a good job against an excellent defensive performance.

“I think I did a good job of doing what it took,” he declared, “just kind of staying patient even though stuff wasn’t going our way. Which is something I don’t know that I could have done when I was younger in my career. I might have forced the issue a little bit more. But Coach Reid trusted me — and trusted our offense to figure it out. He kept calling plays and getting us into the right plays at the right times so that we were able to make it happen there at the end.”

Reid believes his quarterback entered the league with the potential for performances like Sunday’s — but is happy his star was more experienced before it was required.

“I trust him,” Reid reiterated. “I saw enough of his tape in college to know he wasn’t just firing things in there to fire them in. He’s got pretty good decision-making once he’s out there. I’m good with it. I’m more comfortable that he knows the offense better now than he did back then. I think his decision-making is probably better now than it was then by reps.”

Chiefs wide receiver Justin Watson, speaking from the locker room on Wednesday, gave full credit to Mahomes for Sunday’s win. Watson caught two passes for 37 yards against the Titans.

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“He’s just an incredible quarterback,” the receiver stated. “I think this past week was the testament to the type of player he is. I think there was a number of plays he made. That third-and-16 scramble and some of the big throws he made to Kelce and some other guys, there’s no other quarterback in the NFL that wins that game besides from Patrick Mahomes in my opinion.”

The always-professional Mahomes, however, also noted ways he could have played better, including missing wide receiver Mecole Hardman for what would appear to have been an easy touchdown.

“There was definitely some decisions where I missed some throws that were out there,” he admitted. “There’s the one down the middle of the field where I missed Mecole. I thought he was kind of getting in and out and they dropped him. When there’s that many plays, you’re going to miss throws — but whenever they’re touchdown throws, you want to make sure you hit them.”

While the four-time Pro Bowl player wasn’t worried about his recovery from the game, Reid revealed on Wednesday that the staff is focused on getting the entire team a bit of rest.

“We’re using our midseason practices,” the coach said of his plan for Wednesday. “Today’s a lighter day, so they get to recover a little bit. That will help them. We just started that. It just happened to fall on a game where you had a hundred snaps.”