The Kansas City Chiefs face the Dallas Cowboys on Thanksgiving — Thursday, Nov. 25, at 3:30 p.m. By Tammy Ljungblad
The storefronts lining East Texas streets between the pine trees had scratched off the white and Cowboys blue from their window panes and outdoor signage, at least temporarily.
The barber shop, the mom-and-pop air conditioning service, the local high school, even homes and residences had replaced Cowboys signs and logos with those painted or printed in red and gold. Days before the Chiefs were set to play in their first Super Bowl in a half-century back in early 2020, the Texas towns of Tyler and Whitehouse were every bit as decked out as the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City.
Patrick Mahomes had transformed the place — long before he transformed an NFL franchise.
It all felt perfectly symbolic of his own transformation, too.
His itch for football didn’t arrive until later, only after he carried visions of a professional baseball future through grade school. But when it arrived, the fascination was acute. Mahomes watched Cowboys games most weekends, copying that affinity from his father, who took him to AT&T Stadium — Jerry World — for a few games.
They’d purchase nosebleed seats but mingle in the tunnel where the players walked out.
“I don’t know if that’s allowed,” Mahomes quipped.
At some point, he couldn’t help but wonder: What might it be like to play here?
Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes (15) looks for a receiver during the second-half of the Dallas-Kansas City game on Sunday, Nov. 21, 2021 at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City. Tammy Ljungblad tljungblad@kcstar.com
Mahomes will play his first NFL game in that venue, and on the grandest of its stages, when the Chiefs face the Cowboys on Thanksgiving Day. It might be, even probably will be, the most-watched game in NFL history. It’s certainly a game that the postseason-seeking Chiefs need to win.
But it won’t be his first football game in the stadium.
The stakes his first time: A starting job.
His own.
The first trip to Jerry World
Eleven years ago Saturday, Texas Tech rolled into AT&T Stadium for a game against rival Baylor with some mystery attached.
Who would play quarterback?
The Red Raiders had won only two of their past nine games, but it appeared starter Davis Webb would finally be healthy enough to play. They kept that secret until kickoff. Well, until after kickoff.
Webb briefly trotted a few steps onto the field following the opening kick, full pads on and helmet strapped.
Then the freshman sprinted behind him into the huddle.
Mahomes.
“It was my shot to prove I could be the starting quarterback the next year,” he told The Star.
The backdrop for an NFL career that has produced three Super Bowls arrived inside the same stadium Mahomes and the Chiefs will visit Thursday.
With a tryout, of sorts.
“We really didn’t know much about him because he hadn’t played much,” Beau Blackshear, a former Baylor defensive lineman, told The Star this week. “I don’t think we thought that much differently of him from what we’d seen of Geno Smith at West Virginia or Trevone Boykin at TCU. We weren’t really aware of him.
“I am now.”
Mahomes had one of those “the rest is history” kind of days. He set a Big 12 Conference freshman record with 598 passing yards and six touchdowns.
In a 48-46 loss.
Baylor, ranked No. 7 in the country, led 45-20 near the end of the third quarter before Texas Tech stormed back. Well, Mahomes stormed back. He threw four touchdowns over the span of 15 minutes, all of them totaling at least 40 yards.
“Those end-zone shots were gut-wrenching,” Blackshear said.
His sixth touchdown pass of the game pulled the Red Raiders within a two-point conversion of tying it. Mahomes had spent the day scrambling in the pocket and avoiding pressure. On the two-point conversion attempt, Baylor finally got him.
Blackshear got him.
A year ago, Baylor had a 10-year reunion for that team. The Bears finished 11-2 and were ranked as high as No. 4 in the nation. Their head coach, Art Briles, made it a point to find Blackshear at the reunion.
“You’re one of the only people who ever sacked Patrick Mahomes,” he told him. “A bunch of people still can’t do it now.”
Mahomes, true to form, has a different recollection of that game, because he has a different takeaway of that play.
“I think the biggest lesson I learned is I took a sack on the two-point play,” he said. “Coach (Kliff) Kingsbury came up to me after the game and was like, ‘it’s the two-point play – you got to throw it up or do something.’”
They lost the game.
Mahomes won the job. A few months later, on the heels of that season finale, he quit baseball even, after a chance snowstorm in Texas.
It was a big change.
But not everything changed. After that game, Mahomes’ first of three against Baylor at Jerry World, Briles would call him the best player in the Big 12 Conference.
Why?
He’s never out of a football game.
The next trip to Jerry World
The drive from Tyler, Texas to AT&T Stadium in Arlington spans two hours.
It’s home, or at least as close to home as the NFL will offer Mahomes a chance to play.
He says he bought a suite for friends and family for the game this week, though many of his friends make regular trips to see him play already, especially come playoff time.
They grew up together on sports — organized sports, sure, but basketball in the driveway past dark, ping pong in the basement, that kind of thing.
He’s come a long way, literally.
Figuratively, he’s never really left.
“The kid in me,” Mahomes told The Star’s Vahe Gregorian this week, “wants to be able to go out there and play on Thanksgiving and find a way to win.”
He remembers watching these games, the Cowboys competing on the day, and holiday, they own. Tony Romo, then the Dallas quarterback, drew his fandom. Romo will be calling Thursday’s game from the CBS booth.
Mahomes has taken Romo’s place as Thanksgiving Day’s leading character. Heck, the Chiefs have taken the aura, the brand, the presence of a holiday staple.
He never became a Dallas Cowboy, but Mahomes created his own version somewhere else.
And still left his imprint back in East Texas all the same.