A few weeks ago, Patrick Mahomes made one of the craziest plays of his Kansas City Chiefs career.
On a backward pass picked up by the defense, Mahomes sprinted to dive in and actually take the football right back to get his team back possession.
It was quite a defensively impressive moment for the future Hall of Fame quarterback.
It shouldn't have been quite as surprising as it was, though.
In high school, Mahomes was a good defender.
"He was also a crafty safety at Whitehouse High School in Texas during his sophomore season," ESPN's Nate Taylor writes. "He led the Wildcats with a team-high five interceptions, earning all-district honors. Mahomes has the athletic ability and ball skills to be an effective safety. The lone issue is that he never loved tackling in high school -- so that would be his clear weakness on the scouting report."
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That last part might make it tough, but the rest is promising.
And those five interceptions were just as a sophomore, before Mahomes became too valuable at QB to play both ways.
Obviously, the Chiefs won't be putting Mahomes on defense anytime soon, but it's fascinating to think about. In the early days of the NFL, everybody played two ways. It was a different game, but in kind of a cool way.
These days, the only way we can know Mahomes had some serious defensive instinct is to get some context like this, rather than ever getting the chance to see it with our own eyes.
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