Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs are in the Super Bowl for a second consecutive year after beating the 49ers last year in a thriller for their first Super Bowl title in decades.
The defensive coordinator tasked with slowing Mahomes and the Chiefs’ spectacular offense that day was Robert Saleh, who is now the New York Jets head coach, and he remembers vivid details about watching Mahomes go to work in the fourth quarter, erasing a 20-10 Niners lead with 21 fourth quarter points on them. Saleh was asked recently what advice he’d give to the Bucs as they look into trying to contain Mahomes, and he offered up a rather hilarious description of Mahomes’ “little old man jog” between plays that can lull a defense into thinking he’s tired or his feet hurt.
Mahomes saw that description and even the former MVP couldn’t help but laugh at how his shuffle was depicted by Saleh.
— Patrick Mahomes II (@PatrickMahomes) January 28, 2021
It really is an accurate statement, as Mahomes goes from shuffling his feet as he moves from play to play, appearing to walk gingerly, to going full speed, eluding and evading defenders to extend plays to either throw downfield or taking off for a big gain on the ground. It is certainly something to make sure you don’t allow to creep in mentally and think you have him worn out, and given the Bucs’ best weapon as a pass defense is their pass rush, it’ll be critical to their chances of winning that they go full bore all game to disrupt Mahomes (and not get demoralized when he makes something out of nothing).