Entertainers of the Year: Patrick Mahomes

by Julian Spivey

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Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes skyrocketed to NFL stardom quickly and hasn’t let go of the reins ever since.  Mahomes has already been named Athlete of the Year in The Word’s annual best of in sports piece, but now we’re naming him one of our five Entertainers of the Year for 2020.
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Mahomes turned out to be a steal as the tenth overall pick in the 2017 NFL Draft for the Chiefs. He didn’t see the field much in his first season in the league backing up veteran Alex Smith with Kansas City, which made what he did in his second season, his first as a starting QB in the league, amazing as he dominated and wound up winning the NFL MVP honor with an incredible 50 touchdown passes and more than 5,000 yards through the air. An injury forced Mahomes to miss a couple of games in the 2019 season but saw him lead his team to the Super Bowl where he managed a big come from behind victory (something he’s become accustomed to doing to the point that no deficit seems too big) against the San Francisco 49ers to give the franchise its first championship in half a century. That was in February of this year. In the 2020 season, Mahomes has led the Chiefs to a NFL’s best 14-1 through the first 15 games of the season and has the team looking like it could be the first back-to-back champions in nearly two decades. Mahomes is also in the MVP conversation again leading the league with 4,740 yards (almost 300 more than the next closest QB) and is tied for second in the league with 38 touchdown passes. Before the 2020 season the Chiefs gave Mahomes the richest contract in league history with a 10-year extension worth more than $500 million with bonuses thrown in.

Mahomes is quite simply the most exciting player in the country’s most popular sport right now and might be the best athlete in any major sport in the world at the moment. That is why he’s one of The Word’s Entertainers of the Year.