SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes was shocked for two reasons when the Bears traded up to draft quarterback Mitch Trubisky second overall in 2017.
For one, Mahomes said, a third party had assured his camp that he was at the top of the Bears’ quarterback list. And for another, he’d also been told the Bears had no plans to draft a quarterback at all in the first round.
“It wasn’t that I thought the Bears were going to draft me,” he said. “But I was told that if they drafted a quarterback, I would be the quarterback they drafted. That wasn’t directed from their people, but that was told to my camp.”
That’s how covert former general manager Ryan Pace had been when searching for a passer in the draft — not even head coach John Fox knew what the Bears were considering a quarterback until late in the process.
Speaking Tuesday at the team hotel as his Chiefs continued preparing for Sunday’s Super Bowl against the Eagles, Mahomes admitted he was bewildered when Pace traded up one spot to draft the North Carolina quarterback.
“It surprised me a little bit,” Mahomes said. “But they told me they weren’t drafting a quarterback. So that was the most surprising thing of all …
“But they did say if a quarterback was drafted, I would be the guy they drafted.”
That’s a bitter pill for Bears fans to swallow. Mahomes is transcendent — he’s likely to win his second MVP Thursday and will play in his third Super Bowl on Sunday — while the Bears hope Justin Fields breaks their franchise’s passing drought.
Last week, Patrick Mahomes Sr., the former Major League Baseball pitcher, told WSCR-AM that the Bears “told him they were going to draft him” and the family “thought he was going to be the third pick overall and go to Chicago.”
The Bears trading up to draft Trubisky “kind of hurt him,” his dad told the station.
His son showed that he was keeping score when, after scoring against the Bears in 2019, he celebrated by counting to 10 on his fingers — the spot where the Chiefs drafted him.
Tuesday, Mahomes said that his dad “took it a little far” last week and overstated his family’s certainty about what the Bears would do in the draft.
“I was like, ‘I don’t know that it was that serious,'” he said.
The quarterback said he wasn’t “extremely worried about it” in real time.
“I was just happy to get drafted in the first round,” he said. “I’m not going to lie: I wanted to get drafted here to the Kansas City Chiefs. I think it’s well-documented.”
Part of the allure was his relationship with Matt Nagy, who, before being named the Bears head coach in 2018, was the Chiefs’ offensive coordinator. Nagy met with Mahomes during pre-draft meetings at the Chiefs’ facility. He told Mahomes what head coach Andy Reid would ask him about, schematically, the next day.
Nagy wanted him to ace the test. But the more Mahomes thinks about it, the more he wonders whether it was part of the interview all along.
“Nagy did give me the answers,” he said. “He threw me a little sneak peak of what we were going to have the next day. I still to this day think it was a test. Because if he gave me the sneak peak and I didn’t get the answers right it would have looked even worse. He wanted to make sure that I was gonna study.”
Mahomes told the Chiefs that other teams were telling him he could go in the top 12 or so in the draft. The Chiefs traded up from No. 27 and picked him 10th.
