KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Patrick Mahomes is the NFL’s presumed MVP, a 23-year-old wunderkind who ended the Kansas City Chiefs’ postseason curse and has them within a win of the Super Bowl.

His no-look throws and sidearm missiles look nearly effortless. But some, like Brad Childress, know better.

When Childress, the Chiefs’ co-offensive coordinator last season, watches Mahomes, he can’t stop thinking about how much progress the young QB has made since he arrived in Kansas City nearly two years ago.

“I just listen to him at the line of scrimmage and the calls he’s making and how he’s protecting himself and the snap counts he’s putting on and he really is, like, the master at the piano,” Childress told Yahoo Sports this week. “Even though he’s gonna get better, you [already] see him on the keyboard hitting the far left note and far right note.”

Mahomes is naturally gifted, with a rare combination of arm strength, moxie and on-field creativity. Scouts saw all that on his college tape at Texas Tech, but concerns about his “recklessness” — not to mention his loose fundamentals and the “Air Raid” offense he played in — led many to peg him as a second- or third-round pick.

View photos In a regular-season loss to the Patriots, Patrick Mahomes went 23-for-36 for 352 yards, four touchdowns and two interceptions. A win this time against New England earns a trip to Super Bowl LII. (Getty Images) More

The Chiefs, however, were on him early. Mahomes’ strengths were rare, and they figured he could be coached up to diminish his weaknesses. So they traded up from No. 27 overall to No. 10 in the 2017 NFL draft, figuring Mahomes needed polish and time to nail down the extensive verbiage in head coach Andy Reid’s playbook.

It was a good call, obviously. Mahomes just finished his second NFL season — his first as a starter — by completing 66 percent of his passes and throwing for 5,097 yards, 50 touchdowns and only 12 interceptions, a gaudy statline that is one of the best by any second-year quarterback ever (certainly the best since Dan Marino’s historic 1984 season).

Mahomes’ success has even led some to question whether he should have been playing last season as a rookie, when the Chiefs went 10-6 under long-time starter Alex Smith and flopped in the first round of the playoffs.

“I hope I could have won a lot of games last year,” Mahomes said, when asked by Yahoo Sports on Wednesday. “But I don’t know if I could have done this.”

Turns out that Mahomes learned plenty as a backup during his “redshirt year” of 2017, as it took the mentorship of a player no longer on the roster, lots of work with the coaching staff and lots of trial and error to become Kansas City’s equivalent of John Wick.

“You have to have a plan for how you’re going to teach the guy how to be an NFL quarterback and what it means to be the face of the franchise,” Childress said. “Coach Reid always does.”

A ‘heaven-sent’ mentor

Since the start of training camp, Reid has casually name-dropped Smith — often unprompted — at least 11 separate times when talking about Mahomes.

This is no coincidence. Reid likes to joke that Mahomes owes Smith a “castle” for being so good to him, and many close to the situation have made that observation as well.

“First off, Alex shared a lot — he held nothing back, which is a key piece to it,” Childress said. “He made [Patrick] feel as comfortable as anybody in that room.”

That isn’t a given in the NFL, where teammates double as the competition and their success can threaten a livelihood. Mahomes’ godfather, LaTroy Hawkins, spent 21 seasons in Major League Baseball, many of which were played alongside Mahomes’ father, Pat Mahomes. Both men made sure Patrick appreciated what he had in Smith, whom Reid successfully identified as a willing mentor despite Mahomes’ first-round status.

“Alex was heaven-sent,” Hawkins told Yahoo Sports this week. “That was a gift from God right there, for Alex to be so open with a rookie that was brought in, pretty much, to take his job. But that also shows how secure Alex is in who he is as a person outside of football.”

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