FORT WORTH, Texas _ Three days after the New England Patriots' Super Bowl win last season _ which included a stunning overtime defeat of the top-seeded Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC Championship two weeks prior _ Patrick Mahomes, quarterback of the conference runner-up, got back to work.
By all accounts, Mahomes had logged a season for the ages. An AFC West title. Best record in the AFC at 12-4. The captain of an offense that scored 565 points, more than any other team during the regular season. Home-field advantage throughout the playoffs. Personally, he threw for more than 5,000 yards and he scored 50 touchdowns. He earned the league's MVP Trophy.
Still, Mahomes had a hollow feeling on that early February day. Sure, those achievements were real, but so to was the fact that Mahomes felt that he had the squad to get to the Super Bowl, but they weren't quite able to get there.
So in a Fort Worth gym on the western side of town just outside the beltway, Mahomes and his longtime trainer Bobby Stroupe laid out an offseason training plan solely focused on one thing _ reaching the Super Bowl in 2020. And after the Chiefs' 35-24 defeat of the Tennessee Titans in this year's AFC title game, that's exactly what happened.
Mahomes and the Chiefs will take on the NFC champs, the San Francisco 49ers, in Super Bowl LIV next Sunday evening in Miami.
"For Patrick, this is special and it means something," said Stroupe, who knew Mahomes Sr., a former pitcher who played for six MLB teams in 11 seasons. Stroupe started working with Mahomes Jr. when he was a fourth-grader in Tyler. They worked together when Mahomes attended high school in Whitehouse, college at Texas Tech, and now with the Chiefs.
"I know what he's gone through. I know it hasn't been easy for him," Stroupe said. "You see from the outside, the son of a major league pitcher who's been in the locker room ... But it hasn't been like that.
"He's worked his butt off. He trains hard to maximize the gifts that God's given him. It means a whole heckuva lot to me to see somebody reaching their dreams. It's incredible to experience that."
