The University of the Incarnate Word postponed its 2020 football season until the spring, but the team kept practicing last fall. Sometimes coach Eric Morris would move the Sunday practice time, and his assistant coaches at the San Antonio school would laugh, knowing exactly why he’d done it. He wanted to watch the player who appears, at times, to be a deity incarnate.
Morris was Patrick Mahomes’s offensive coordinator at Texas Tech. When Morris watches Mahomes now, he does not just see the best player in the NFL, like the rest of us do. He sees the previous versions of Mahomes and the progress that Mahomes has made, even since becoming an NFL star.