Patrick Mahomes after 3rd Super Bowl ring: ‘We ain’t done yet.’ Take his word for it

In mid-July last year, Patrick Mahomes sat among the Chiefs’ offensive coaches in a Missouri Western dorm room, there to learn the design of a new play.
His lead teacher: Andy Reid.

Mahomes declined to elaborate on the specifics of the particular passing play, but the important thing, he would find out, is that it required him to make a difficult across-the-body throw.
Which prompted his teacher to mutter something.
“I don’t know if you can do that,” Reid said, as Mahomes later recalled. “They say you can’t do it.”
Mahomes smiled the couple of times he offered The Star some details of that story, because he knew the intention behind the comment.
A challenge.
His teammates know what you, me and anyone paying attention have long assumed: Their quarterback thrives on doubt. It’s long been that way and long been in the public eye that way, even as he typically leaves himself some plausible deniability.
There’s a reason I’m bringing this up now, in the dead of the offseason, after an evening in which the Chiefs received their Super Bowl LVIII rings at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. It was one year ago on this night — one reserved for the same team — in which Mahomes had his mind elsewhere, at least briefly.
On the doubters.
To refresh your memory: Bengals wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase had responded to a mention of Patrick Mahomes with a regrettable, “Pat Who.”
So on ring ceremony night a year ago, Mahomes tweeted a photo of his two rings with a two-word caption: That’s Who.
Think of that. As he received a Super Bowl ring, he couldn’t help but reference another team, another player, another comment.
“When people say we can’t,” Mahomes explained, “we say, y’all haven’t seen how we work.”
But there’s a new theme of this offseason, in the days, then weeks and now months since Mahomes won his third Super Bowl — a theme that lasted through the ring ceremony Thursday.
Silence.
A league that thrives on its noise has been strangely quiet.
A player that thrives on the outside noise has, well, none of it on which to thrive.
On Thursday, with his third Super Bowl ring as the backdrop, Mahomes more simply posted: “We ain’t done.”
Not a clap-back. Nothing.
“I don’t think anyone has said anything,” Mahomes said.
And it would be wise not to doubt it.
Not publicly, anyway.
Maybe the rest of the league, six-plus years into this journey, has finally learned the most obvious of lessons: It’s best not to poke the bear. It’s best not to wake up the wrong, ahem, (gentleman).
There will be a slip at some point, absolutely. We haven’t heard the last of everyone. But for now, we wait.
Well, that’s one way to look at it.
Those around him will find another: It might be time to get creative.
“Do you have anything for us this year?” offensive coordinator Matt Nagy quipped when I asked him about it.
I use the word quipped, but there was actually at least a hint of seriousness to Nagy’s reply. This probably won’t surprise you, but more than a few Chiefs players and coaches have made a habit out of making sure Mahomes sees just about anything and just about everything.
He’s aware when the Cincinnati mayor takes a shot. Aware when a Tampa Bay edge rusher verbally rips his offensive line. He finds it all. Digs into the nooks and crannies for it. And, let’s be honest, he’s willing to stretch something to make it a neat fit.
He already has a pretty wide peripheral, in other words.
But, you know, better safe than sorry.
“If I ever see anything, I’ll send it to him,” Chiefs backup quarterback Chris Oladokun said. “Any tweets or anything. Just to nab at him a little bit. It’s definitely good for motivation.”
Step back and survey that dynamic: It’s reached a point in which Patrick Mahomes’ teammates are making sure he didn’t miss someone trying to bury him.
That’s a characteristic of many of greats, sure, the best exampled chronicled in the “The Last Dance,” a documentary with Michael Jordan as its subject.
But it’s dependent on someone supplying the material.
This summer, the silence from rest of the league sends a different message:
Supply your own.
Fine then. Here’s just one example, and it’s similar to the one at the top:
In their offseason camps this summer, the Chiefs have worked most intricately on their deep passing game.
We’ll see whether defenses allow them to actually connect on them at a higher rate than they did a year ago, when Mahomes had the shortest average depth of target in the league. But they’ve taken their shots in organized team activities (OTAs) and mandatory minicamp.
But as they underscore it, there’s that same voice, muttering along, even in mid-play.
“Coach Reid has gone back to my old days. He’s trying to force me to push the ball down the field,” Mahomes said. “And if I don’t, he throws little jabs at me, like, ‘Oh, you want to throw the check-down here?’
“I’m just like, ‘I got you, Coach. We’re going to push it.’”
He is.
No one else has. Not yet.