MIAMI — NFL commissioner Roger Goodell probably shouldn't have favorite players but he certainly appeared a Patrick Mahomes fan during his Super Bowl press conference Wednesday.
“Patrick Mahomes anywhere in the NFL is good for me,” Goodell said when asked if there are advantages for the league having Mahomes in Kansas City as opposed to a major market such as New York or Los Angeles. “I have to tell you that not only is he an incredible player, but he is an incredible young man. Wherever he plays in the NFL, he's going to have an impact and I'm proud to have him as a Kansas City Chief.”
Mahomes said the support of Chiefs fans attracted to him to Kansas City from the very beginning.
“I hope I get to play there the rest of my career,” Mahomes said. “Just the people and how they accept you, how they care about you more as a person than they do as a player and how much passion that they have for the Kansas City, it's special.”
Goodell said Mahomes represents a new wave of quarterback talent invading the NFL.
“Eighty percent of the games in 2019 featured at least one starting quarterback under the age of 27, the most in our history,” he said.
The commissioner said Mahomes, Deshaun Watson and other great young players are “the future of our league.”
“Not just with quarterbacks, with great young players at every position, and we're happy to have (Mahomes) as a Kansas City Chiefs and happy to have him here in the Super Bowl.”
Mahomes believes he ended up in the perfect place in Kansas City.
“To have coach (Andy) Reid and these coaches around me, to have Alex Smith in front of me for a year and being to learn from him, and then obviously to have all the players that I have around me. I'm in a place where the team was already a winning team, a team that had a lot of success. I came in was able to just be who I am and ended up being able to win a lot of football games early in my career.”
