ST. JOSEPH, Mo. — Patrick Mahomes will turn 30 in two weeks.
There are few signs of it. The trademark faux-hawk that many kids over the past decade adopted as their own is now closely cropped, though not totally gone. His playstyle is a touch less breakneck than it was during his first MVP season of 2018. He’s also had his fair share of injuries, from the dislocated right kneecap of 2019 to the turf toe of 2020 to the high ankle sprain during the 2022 playoffs. He’s taken plenty of hits on top of that, too.
Then, there are the hints of cultural regression he’s picking up in the locker room.
“It’s the music—I’m a big music guy,” said Mahomes, after a brisk August practice, on the growing age gap between him and his younger teammates.
“I can stay in tune with most of them,” he continues. “But they’ll come out with some rapper sometimes—and I’m a rap music guy—and I don't know who they are. And the guys are singing every word to it. So I’m having to have guys that are younger than me introduce me to new rappers, and I’m like, That makes me the old guy. Like Alex Smith, I was doing that to Alex Smith.”
After three Super Bowl titles, five AFC championships, and AFC West crowns and conference title game appearances in all seven of his seasons as the Chiefs’ starter, Mahomes is now one of the 10 oldest players on the roster, and one of the 10 oldest starting quarterbacks in football. All that is significant if for no other reason than the fact that it’s when a quarterback starts asking himself new questions.
“So I’m having to have guys that are younger than me introduce me to new rappers, and I’m like, ‘That makes me the old guy.’ Like Alex Smith, I was doing that to Alex Smith.”Mahomes on his young teammates
One is how he can continue to build bonds with teammates, as he gets old enough for them to tell him how much they loved watching him growing up. To that end, going back to music, Mahomes says, “I definitely ask them—I gotta stay in-tune, I got playlists I make for the season, so I have to get [help from] the new guys on the playlists.”
Another is exactly what he can do for an encore to his 20s.
He’s won as many Super Bowls and gone to two more than Tom Brady did in his 20s. He’s third all-time in passing yards before age 30, behind only Matthew Stafford and Peyton Manning, and is tied for first in touchdowns, a tie with Dan Marino he’ll break if he can throw for one more in Week 1 or 2.
Mahomes’s reality is one few professional athletes at his level face—the toughest act for him to follow will be his own.
But he does have a plan for that.
Cheating Father Time
Tom Brady and Mahomes have discussed how a quarterback ages, and I can recall covering Brady as he got older, and how he’d explain his broad-based objective at the time.
Brady once took his hand to illustrate it, moving it upward to show the trajectory of a football player’s know-how, which he said should always be advancing. Then, he’d show what would happen to most players physically, taking his other hand and moving it at a similar pace in the other direction. The goal, he’d say, would be to slow the physical decline, in turn flattening that second trajectory, as much as possible, to allow for the natural mental advancements that come to make a real on-field impact.
Brady’s example helped explain how he could cheat Father Time, maintaining an insatiable thirst for information, while being maniacal about preserving his physical capacity, so his body could cash the checks his mind was increasingly capable of writing.
As Mahomes sees it, the first part of that equation is happening already for him.
“You learn so much,” he said. “And when you get to your 30s, you have a better sense of why you’re calling a play, why it’s called, and why it’s going to set up the next play. I think for me, it’s about learning that and still having the aggressiveness of my 20s, and being able to push the envelope, and throw the ball and give guys chances to make plays.”
The second part of the equation is one Mahomes is also acutely aware of—“If I just keep taking care of my body, keep my body in the right shape, my mind takes it to a new level.”
He also knows it’ll take a little more effort and ingenuity than the first part should.
The Netflix “Quarterback” documentary of a couple of years ago captured part of that, with Mahomes invested in body work outside the building as voraciously as he was under the Chiefs’ oversight. It’s why he has the Kansas City strength staff in constant communication with his personal trainer, Bobby Stroupe, ensuring all of that is synced up.
“They have a plan with [Stroupe] where I can do recovery workouts throughout the week, and I feel like that made my body feel a lot better at the end of a season, compared to how I felt in the beginning,” Mahomes said. ”And so I think just doing that, plus I have a chef full-time. I have the whole deal. We’ve found a great way to maintain my body. So I’m enjoying football, but I’m still feeling great the whole season.”
From there, Mahomes’s comprehensive anti-aging plan carries over to how he plays on the field.
However, that part of it really isn’t new. Since becoming the Chiefs’ starter, he’s averaged 3.83 carries per game, and outside of a 43-carry season in which he missed two games (2019) and a 75-carry season (2023), his rushing attempts have been between 58 and 66 carries every year. That was after averaging over 10 carries per game his last two years in college, showing that even when he runs, he’s mostly buying time to throw.
So what’s been his style for a while will only become more important, he knows, as the years go on.
“The running joke is I don’t really run until the playoffs,” he said. “But it’s real—I’ll slide more in the regular season, knowing it’s a long season and you don’t have to take those hits. And then when it comes down to it, if it’s the end of games or if it’s playoffs, or big situations, I’ll run and take those hits and get those first downs. And I think that’s kind of subconsciously thinking about, You got to play the entire season, you’ve got to be there for the big moments. So that’s kind of just how I’ve always played.”
Which is one more thing that should help in the long run.
His motives for playing
Then, you get Mahomes’s motives to keep playing, and it’s fair to say that how the 2024 season ended for the Chiefs has given the team plenty of fuel for the 2025 fire.
Beyond that, after Mahomes peeled himself off the canvas from the 40–22 uppercut the Eagles delivered his team in February in the Super Bowl, he’s worked to use that tough Sunday night as a teach tape for what he doesn’t want to be as a quarterback.
Is it easy to watch? Of course not. Does it provide good reminders? It does.
“I mean, last year, we won a lot of games where we didn’t play our best football,” he said. “And it all came to a head in that last game, where we didn’t play our best football. We played against a team that was playing superior football to us that day, and they dominated us. So we had to go back to the drawing board, figure out what we were doing wrong, what we were doing right.”
On a personal level, Mahomes said he saw a little too much of the old gunslinger in himself.
The Chiefs got down 10–0, and he responded with aggression, which led to Cooper DeJean’s pick-six. Later in the second quarter, trailing 17–0 after DeJean’s score and backed up to the goal line, he was picked again, this time by Zack Baun, and the Eagles then quickly scored again to make it 24–0 at the half.
“It was compounding mistakes,” Mahomes continued. “All year long, even if we weren’t playing our best football, we were limiting mistakes, trying to keep ourselves in the game, knowing that we were able to execute at the end of games, and win the games. In that game, we didn’t do that. They got the momentum early and instead of managing the game, getting it back to where we can be in a manageable situation, we just kept, and especially me, I kept compounding mistakes, trying to make a big play happen when it wasn’t there.
“That’s stuff that you can’t do. So the goal this year is if we can start faster, we can play better, so that we’re not in the tight games at the very end, knowing that we can win those if we need to.”
Andy Reid echoed his Mahomes’s sentiment, telling me, “I listen to what they say, and after the game they all took responsibility for it, as did the coaches. And if you’re going to make change, if you’re going to get better, you’ve got to be able to do that. So then you don’t have to say much as a head coach. You move on. And I’m in the same boat. I could have done a ton of things better. That’s how we approached the offseason.”
But the absolute truth, if you listen to Mahomes and hear what he’s saying, the Chiefs could’ve won that game by a million, and become the first team to win three in a row, and it probably wouldn’t have altered the 29-year-old’s approach to the spring and summer much, if it would’ve at all.
Because his primary motivation is simply wanting to be in the place he’d rather be than anywhere else in the world.
As he and I talked, I mentioned how as I’d gotten to know Brady and some people around him, I came to realize that setting records or beating certain opponents or hoisting however many trophies really wasn’t the primary thing pushing him out onto the field at an age by which legends he grew up watching—Joe Montana, John Elway, Dan Marino—had long been gone. It was simpler than that. It was that he truly and unabashedly loved it. And that he loved more than the Sunday afternoons. He loved all of it.
Hearing that, Mahomes smiled and nodded.
“One hundred percent,” he said. “When I talk to these kids out here …”
Mahomes then pointed at the hill where droves of fans were parked.
“They always ask me questions,” he continued. “They ask me about why I play football. I always love the team part of it. Even the process, all of it, is amazing. But I love just coming together as a team. And it’s like your best friends: you’re going to summer camp, and you’re practicing. You’re playing a game at the end of the day, and you’re doing it with all your best friends. I love that, and my best friends in the world are my teammates, and that’s because we have this common goal, and we’ve built this bond together.
“And if I lose that, I think that’s when I’ll be done playing, because I love sports for what it can do, not only on the field, but for society.”
No one’s counting on that day coming for a while.
What would make him retire
When Reid looks at his quarterback now, he sees a man at peace. He’s married. He has three children. He’s in his element as a player and might someday be considered the greatest ever.
“He’s got things situated. He’s got family, faith and football, and he takes care of those. He’s a great dad; he spends time at it, which is huge. That’s important. And then he spends time on football,” Reid said. “So he’s got all those things narrowed down, where he can spend time in all those positions. He still wants to be great every play. He tries to keep his body absolutely the right way that’s best for him. And he’s done a great job as a leader out here. I mean, he’s phenomenal that way.”
Reid then added, looking at older quarterbacks that have won in the past, he sees a lot of what’s already ingrained in Mahomes: “You never lose the desire, stay humble, and stay hungry. If you can do that, then more power to you. People get complacent. You gotta fight that. That’s part of human nature. And that’s the way he’s wired. It’s how he’s handled things.”
On this particular August day, Mahomes is focused on more minor details than that.
“You never lose the desire, stay humble, and stay hungry. If you can do that, then more power to you. People get complacent. You gotta fight that. That’s part of human nature. And that’s the way he’s wired. It’s how he’s handled things.”Reid on Mahomes
With Rashee Rice and Hollywood Brown sidelined, he spends the morning practice giving speedy reclamation project Tyquan Thornton chances—Thornton impressed in camp—which allowed for him to stay on one goal he has for the offense in 2025. It’s actually the same goal he had in 2024, before Brown and Rice got hurt, though Xavier Worthy gave everyone a taste of where it could wind up going.
“I’ve said this so many times—I’m going to get back to giving guys chances downfield,” he said. “Like it doesn’t have to be wide open, it doesn’t have to be the perfect coverage, [but] if we got a guy on the matchup that we like down the field, let’s give the guy a chance down the field. I think you saw Xavier catch one today. Those guys are paid to make plays, and they want those chances, so I’ll give those opportunities to them.”
So that’s the story for this year. The Chiefs are going to try to start faster, play faster on offense, and avoid the sort of killer mistakes that plagued them in the Super Bowl.
But, in the grand scheme, it’s a small part of a much larger canvas Mahomes is working off.
Chances are, he’ll be right back on the practice field, talking the same way, carrying the same sort of expectations and goals, next summer. And the summer after that.
Mahomes, for his part, won’t put a number or range on how much longer he wants to play, like Brady did at 30. But you can rest assured, if he has his way, he’ll be around a while.
“It started with Tom and LeBron [James]—you can play longer,” Mahomes said. “I think, for me, as long as I can play, and have fun, and my family’s enjoying it, I’ll play. I don’t want to take away from my family. My kids are still young, but they’re getting older, and they love coming to the football games; they love being there. And the one good thing—compared to baseball, like when I grew up, my Dad was always gone—with football, you have a home city.
“So, hopefully, I can play as long as I keep playing well, and my family is enjoying it.”
Which is his way of saying he’s probably got more than a few years left of asking his teammates for their playlists.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Patrick Mahomes Talks Turning 30, Getting Better and What Would Make Him Retire.