The Benefits of Playing Multiple Sports

 

Esquire - "Patrick Mahomes Knows Where Football Is Heading"

"“But where you really see it is in high school now. I watch a lot of high school football around Kansas City, and what I see now is completely different from how I think it was even back when I was in high school. You see teams embracing these NFL-type offenses and quarterbacks out there just doing incredible things when it looks like the play is dead.” One thing Mahomes would love to see is less specialization in youth sports. He understands that a lot of young players think they need to specialize to keep up and, later, to excel at a specific sport. And he’s careful not to discourage that. But he believes that playing different sports helps athletes learn to compete and find ways to win.

“So much of what I do is because I played baseball,” he says. “I was a shortstop, and out on the football field I’m doing exactly what I was doing as a shortstop. I’m hitting the first baseman in the chest. All those arm angles, throwing sidearm, underhand, against the body—all of that is stuff I did as a shortstop.

“But playing high school basketball also had a huge influence on the way I play. I was a point guard, and in many ways that’s exactly how I feel now. I’m still the point guard, trying to get the ball to people in space, get the ball to them in a position to score. In a lot of ways, it’s exactly the same thing.” "