Patrick Mahomes: The dream becomes a reality

Seven seasons after Len Dawson took his final snap as a Chiefs quarterback Kansas City went all in on the guy they hoped would be their next great quarterback when they took Todd Blackledge with the seventh overall pick in the 1983 NFL Draft. Unless you’re very new to the Chiefs Kingdom you know how that turned out. Blackledge would start just 24 games over five seasons for the Chiefs while two quarterbacks selected after him (Dan Marino and Jim Kelly) would go on to have Hall of Fame careers.

Call it a curse, an “organizational philosophy”, or fear of making the same mistake twice. Whatever you call it, the end result was that the next 30 years would be dominated by quarterbacks that were castoffs from other teams. Some were traded for. Some were free agent signings. Many of them were former San Francisco 49ers. None of them were Chiefs like Derrick Thomas was a Chief. None of them were Chiefs like Will Shields was a Chief.

Look, I have fond memories of guys like Steve DeBerg, Joe Montana, Trent Green, and even the recently departed Alex Smith, but none of them could ever be to my team what John Elway was to Denver or Aaron Rodgers is to the Green Bay Packers. Now I’m not saying that Patrick Mahomes is going to be the next Elway or Rodgers, but at least there’s a chance.

Was their fleeting hope that maybe a guy like Brodie Croyle or Matt Blundin could be “the guy”? Sure, but that was just the desperate hopes of a quarterback-starved fanbase. There was no significant commitment by the organization with those guys and certainly no national buzz around them. They were the football equivalent of the Chiefs throwing “stuff” against the wall to see if anything sticks.

There is a famous saying: “it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.” For the last 30 years, the Chiefs approach to the quarterback position has been the exact opposite. They can’t get their hearts broken by a quarterback if they don’t invest heavily in one, right?

Here’s the problem. Those same thirty years have been filled with nothing but postseason heartbreak because they haven’t had that great quarterback that they were so afraid to try for. In trying to avoid heartbreak, they actually ended up wallowing in it like a guy that was left at the alter in 1983—the one who has been sitting alone in his apartment ever since, crying himself to sleep while watching Sleepless In Seattle every Saturday night and wondering why its not happening for him.

Well the Kansas City Chiefs aren’t sitting at home feeling sorry for themselves anymore.