help inform the independent training program that he
goes through with Stroupe, six hours a week during the
season and 12 to 15 hours a week during the offseason.
This preparation, in turn, allows Mahomes to pull a
mental ripcord during a play and execute a feat of quar-
terbacking wonderment.
His case seems to represent a fascinating divide in the
recent evolutionary development of quarterbacks. Almost
all the new wave of QB coaches agree on the basic tenets:
controlled experimentation (let the kids play like kids and
see what happens, then help them develop a solid founda-
tional base) and a less cemented idea of what fundamentals
are (don’t immediately call someone undisciplined for
throwing off-platform or from a different arm angle, but
work toward it, or work with it). But the approaches to
their instruction are disparate.
Stroupe, for example, calls traditional drills “stupid,”
adding that he has not plucked an orange cone out of his
mesh bag to delineate a throwing lane for Mahomes in
roughly seven years. He likes to say “a drill is not a pill.”
Mahomes’s natural gifts are molded in a process called
“movement literacy,” which takes his skills and chisels
them through practical actions that are, essentially, pared-
down versions of the kinds of steps, jukes and sprints
he would need to make during a game. He spends time
skipping on one leg while walking on the other. From
years of training, he sprints backward almost as fast ashe sprints forward. He runs in curvilinear patterns. On
a strip of padded track he does both symmetrical and
asymmetrical shuff les, steps and skips while dealing
with different variables (anything from balancing a ball
on the top of his hand to throwing a football). These
exercises bolster his inherent ability to sprint out of the
pocket, open his hips and launch a cross-body pass the
length of the field.
Mahomes works on intensely microscopic ankle and
foot balance drills, which help his body find a certain
homeostasis when, for example, he launches one of his
trademark unbalanced RPO throws. The result, Stroupe
says, is “an ability to express himself creatively through
the quarterback position, which is a really beautiful thing.”
Depending on which high-profile quarterback trainerDECEMBER 2021 41What if we tried to better understand on-field chaos and
found a way to practice it?
What if we questioned the existing knowledge?
“What would have happened if Patrick Mahomes had
modeled his game completely after Peyton Manning?”
asks Bobby Stroupe, a health, performance and player
development coach who works with the K.C. quarterback.
“If he tried to stand on his tippy toes and dance around
and throw the ball down like a dart, would you even
know his name?”M
AHOMES ROTATES HIS spine at 240 degrees per
millisecond and has moving head control reminis-
cent of a Northern saw-whet owl—facts you do not need
DA to know but ones Mahomes knows about himself. They
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“WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF PATRICK MAHOMES HAD MODELED
HIS GAME AFTER PEYTON MANNING? IF HE TRIED TO STAND ON HIS TIPPY TOES
AND THROW THE BALL DOWN LIKE A DART?” ASKS STROUPE.