Before the Chiefs sprung Patrick Mahomes on the NFL — and the quarterback threw 50 touchdowns to win the league MVP crown— they gave him a redshirt year.
Matt Nagy, their offensive coordinator in 2017, was Mahomes’ tutor in the quarterback room. He didn’t throw a single regular-season pass as a rookie until Week 17, when the Chiefs’ playoff fate had already been sealed.
“That was a great room to grow up in,” Chiefs coach Andy Reid said Wednesday. “Matt Nagy is your coach; [quality control coach] Mike Kafka, who played, he was in there. And then [starter] Alex Smith.
“I mean, c’mon. That was like the University of Quarterbacks for ya, right there.”
Culture was the key — a dicey proposition when the room had a veteran starter and a rookie drafted to eventually replace him.
Nagy said Mahomes would “be the first to tell you that that year that he spent redshirting under Alex Smith is probably gonna go down as a very significant year to him to grow.”
They all learned to trust each other.
“No. 1,” Nagy said. “They’ve all got to have each other’s back.”
While Reid said Nagy “has kinda done the same thing” in Chicago, signing Chase Daniel to be the veteran voice, the magic hasn’t quite followed.
If the Chiefs quarterbacks attend a university, the Bears feel more like a junior college.
That’s what makes Mahomes’ trip to Soldier Field particularly irksome for Bears fans. Not only did the Bears make a trade to draft Trubisky over Mahomes, they employ the man who helped Reid prepare the Chiefs quarterback for stardom.
The Chiefs interviewed both Trubisky and Mahomes before the draft. The former came off the board second overall, though, and they eventually traded up to draft the latter 10th overall in 2017.
“He has those great instincts to go with everything there,” Reid said. “He loves playing. He loves playing the game. That’s a fun thing to be a part of.”
Reid has been a sounding board for Nagy during this no-so-fun season. The Chiefs coach talks to Nagy more than any of his former pupils.
“He’s just a calming presence,” Nagy said. “He’s somebody that I trust as a friend, as a mentor. The amount of trust that I have for him and the experience — the life experiences and the coaching experiences that he’s been through, and the experiences we’ve been through together for so many years — he’s taught me to be who I am as a coach. And taught me to be myself as a human being.
“And so when those times arise, where you need a little bit of advice from somebody whose been through something, he’s the guy I go to.”
Reid, then, is protective when talking about his friend — and the 7-7 record that followed his 12-4 Coach of the Year campaign. Reid cited injuries and luck as “things you can’t control” as biting the Bears.
“[Nagy] is so mentally tough,” Reid said. “He tries to get the best out of his guys. The guys know that. And so, he’ll be fine. …
“He’s not going to hang his head. You know how he is. I mean, he just keeps going. He’s going to try to fix the issues and go with it. And that’s how he rolls. That’s the sign, I think, of a good coach.”
Nagy, he said, is in the right place.
“Chicago is a tough place,” Reid said. “It’s a blue-collar place and he that’s what he is. He’s a central [Pennsylvania] guy that he’s got that toughness. I just think it’s a great fit.”
