Rookies reporting to training camp on Tuesday signifies how close we are to the 2023 NFL season, and the Kansas City Chiefs defending their Super Bowl.
Despite winning a Super Bowl last season, Patrick Mahomes understands that this year is a clean slate. They can’t hang their hat on their Super Bowl LVII win against the Philadelphia Eagles. Players, both new and old, will need to be focused if they want to go back-to-back.
“Yeah I mean there hasn’t been a team to go back-to-back since the Patriots in I think ’03-’04. So, everybody’s motivated by that,” Mahomes told reporters on Tuesday. “You should be motivated every year in the league it shouldn’t matter what last year was, you should be motivated to do it again. When you have that parade, when you go through the offseason that I’ve been through you want to do it again. You only get those opportunities by winning the Super Bowl. So for us, we want to make sure that we can build up and try to win that Super Bowl again because that moment, that feeling is something you just want to grab every single time you get the opportunity to.”
After winning Super Bowl LIV in 2019, the Chiefs still had great success. They followed up their “Run It Back” theme with a return to the big game in Super Bowl LV. They fell short of their goal in that game and Mahomes wants to be more buttoned-up this time around when it comes to defending last year’s Super Bowl title.
“I don’t think we laid off the little things, but just having that consistent effort every single week,” Mahomes explained. “Look at us last time after we won the first Super Bowl, we really were like 14-1 we sat the last game went to the playoffs and ended up losing in the Super Bowl. You get in that mode especially when you’re winning a lot of games where you – I don’t want to say coast – but you kind of [think] ‘this is what we do, let’s just go out, practice this way, and then win a game.’ Whereas this time I think I’m going to try to really push and motivate guys to try to continue to try and get better. Even though we’re winning football games let’s not be satisfied with just winning, let’s be satisfied with finding ways to get better every single week. And so, whenever you get to that opportunity you don’t let it squander, you really take advantage of it. It’s hard.”
Winning in the NFL is difficult, to say the least. Mahomes understands that this year especially will be a tall task, as the AFC is loaded with talent in every division.
“I think it’s going to be the hardest it’s ever been,” Mahomes continued. “I’ve said it a lot, you look at the AFC, almost every team you can see a path for them getting to the playoffs. And I know you say that every year, but I think this year it’s really real. We know week in and week out it’s going to be a challenge for us, let’s get better and try to win as many football games as possible and put ourselves in that position.”
Every team starts with the same record when the season kicks off in September and they’re all building toward the same goal. The 27-year-old quarterback is focused on improving and ensuring that this team is even better than the one they fielded a season ago.
“I think the theme this year is how can we keep building,” Mahomes said. “Obviously, we won the Super Bowl last year and it was amazing, but we still have a lot of young guys. We want to continue to get better and better. You look around the AFC, everyone’s gotten better. So, you want to continue to build and build and not be satisfied with what we did last year and see if we can take that next step.”
