With two Super Bowl trophies and two league MVP awards six years into his NFL career, Patrick Mahomes is already in the conversation for being one of the greatest players of all time.
But none of it would be possible without his wife Brittany, the 27-year-old Kansas City Chiefs star told CBS Mornings in a new interview Monday.
“I truly mean this when I say, I think if I didn’t have Brittany, I wouldn’t be in the position I am now,” Mahomes said.
The high school sweethearts married last July and have two children together, daughter Sterling Skye, 2, and their eight-month-old son, Patrick “Bronze” Lavon Mahomes III.
Mahomes spoke with CBS Mornings ahead of the premiere of Quarterback, a new Netflix series which follows him, Minnesota Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins, and then-Atlanta Falcons quarterback Marcus Mariota throughout their day-to-day lives in the NFL.
Brittany and the couple’s two young children are featured prominently throughout the series, which shows Mahomes life on the field and off of it, at home with his family. How the Mahomes family deals with the NFL spotlight is one of the main subjects throughout the series.
“I was not prepared for this,” Brittany said of the intensity of life in the NFL. “And at such a young age. We were in love and I loved him with all of my heart. But, you know, I didn’t expect it to skyrocket this soon, and us kind of just being thrown into the fire like this.”
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Mahomes, though, decided to embrace it and throw himself in front of the lens after talking with football hall of famer (and Quarterback executive producer) Peyton Manning about regrets he had from his playing career. Manning told Mahomes that he wished there was behind-the-scenes footage from his time playing that he could one day share with his own family.
“What stuck with me is he said, ‘At the end of my career, I wish I would have done it so my kids could’ve seen what I was doing every day.’ And that hit me, obviously, having two kids. When my kids grow up, I wanted them to see that dad wasn’t just gone just to be gone. I was gone doing something, to build, to be great. And so, whenever they get older, they can see how hard I worked.”
At the premiere of Quarterback, Mahomes told PEOPLE that he hopes the series can provide a blueprint for his kids to understand achieving their dreams will take hard work.
“I don’t know what my kids’ dreams are going to be, but I want them to work hard at it and try to achieve those,” he adds to PEOPLE about the inspiration this will hopefully provide them. “Now they’re too young now to understand, but when they see this as they get older, I want them to know that they can go out there and chase their dreams and still have a great family at home.”
