The look in his eyes and how he hobbled off the field, the pain Patrick Mahomes felt was evident.
The Chiefs quarterback suffered a high ankle sprain in the divisional round of the NFL playoffs. But something else was apparent. He wasn't going to leave the game for long.
“I'm not coming out,” Chiefs senior assistant and quarterbacks coach Matt Nagy recalled Mahomes saying, when speaking with me in Arizona prior to the Super Bowl. “When some guys say that, they don't mean it. When he said it, he meant it.
“He's an absolute warrior. People don't understand how truly tough he is. There's tough and then there's Patrick tough. He's tough as nails, and I just think it's special to see and we're lucky to have him.”