A must-read on the truth behind how Patrick Mahomes ended up in Kansas City

Old friend Terez Paylor of Yahoo! Sports still lives in Kansas City and keeps a close eye on the Chiefs—he hosts the Terez Paylor Show on 610 Sports Radio every Monday.

With Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes off to such a hot start, Paylor dropped an outstanding article on how he ended up in Kansas City on Friday, beginning with the early interest of current Chiefs general manager Brett Veach, continuing with how Veach got Andy Reid involved and finishing with the art of former Chiefs GM John Dorsey outmaneuvering four other teams on draft night.

The article is full of great nuggets like this:

“Brett (Veach) said in a recent interview that if the Chiefs had the first overall pick, they would have taken Patrick – and I believe him,” Cabott said. “Brett was pretty sincere and genuine in his interest the whole time.”

After reading twice, here are my quick takeaways:

• It was confirmed that Veach was one of the first members of the Chiefs personnel staff to like Mahomes. There is no doubt about that.
• Veach pushed Mahomes onto Reid, and he was only able to do so because of the trust he had built with the Chiefs’ head coach by alerting him about players he loved while with the Eagles, such as Fletcher Cox and DeSean Jackson. History told Reid that if Veach liked a guy, he should pay special attention.
• Reid has said in the past that Veach is responsible for Mahomes, which to me, has always felt like a vast exaggeration. I never understood why Reid and the Chiefs felt the need to push that out there—the idea that Dorsey had little to do with it. As Paylor writes, Dorsey was well aware of Mahomes and “outmaneuvered four other teams” on draft night to make sure he didn’t end up anywhere else.
• When the Chiefs were interested in Marcus Peters, they sent Chris Ballard, not Dorsey, to Oakland to find out more about him. When Peters won defensive rookie of the year in 2015, no one was saying, “Yeah, but Chris Ballard drafted Peters.” It was always just the Chiefs.
• On Thursday night, another quarterback who Dorsey had a hand in drafting gave the Browns their first win in 635 days. If the Browns suddenly choose to fire Dorsey in two months, that fact won’t change.

Again, I encourage you to read Paylor’s well-written piece and draw your own conclusions.