Keeping other players was a priority for Mahomes
“How can we get creative to set those benchmarks, but also find a way to surround [Patrick Mahomes] with talent?”
That’s a rhetorical question that Chiefs general manager Brett Veach posed to reporters during today’s press conferences. As it turns out the answer was simply to be on the same page with your quarterback and his representation.
“I’ll tell you, Pat was very cautious about the whole situation about being able to keep players,” Andy Reid said. “He was in the dialogue there and he made it known to us that however we can work that out we can do it.”
Mahomes and his agents, in fact, named the ability to keep players around him one of the two things that were important to him during the course of contract negotiations.
“Obviously, I wanted the security to take care of my family and future generations of family,” Mahomes said. “But I also wanted to keep great players around me. I’m not going to sit here and lie and say that having a great football team around me doesn’t help me when I’m on the field. So I wanted to find the best way that I could do that. I feel like as we talked and as Chris (Cabbott) and all these guys talked, they came to me with this idea and this concept of making me financially secure but having the ability to go out and sign and re-sign all these guys. Like we’re returning 20-of-22 starters — I knew that this was going to be the right way to do it where we can accomplish both of those things that are so important to me.”
Mahomes wants to be sure that his teammates are also able to be rewarded and paid for their success, after all, football is a team game.