As Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes kicked off a week in the media spotlight before Super Bowl LVII in Glendale, Arizona, on Sunday, he put the focus where it belongs — on God.
“My Christian faith plays a role in everything that I do,” Mahomes told reporters on Monday during the Super Bowl’s Opening Night event at Footprint Center in Phoenix.
“I mean, I always ask God to lead me in the right direction and let me be who I am for His name,” he said.
“So it has a role in everything that I do, and obviously it will be on a huge stage at the Super Bowl that He’s given me and I want to make sure I’m glorifying Him while I do it,” Mahomes said.
The 27-year-old quarterback had pointed to God after the Chiefs ground out a 23-20 win over the Cincinnati Bengals in the AFC Championship Game on Jan. 29.
“First of all, I wanna thank God, man,” he said immediately after the game, where he played through a high ankle sprain. “He healed my body this week to battle through that. He gave me the strength to be out here.”
Mahomes, who won his first regular season MVP in the 2018-2019 season, used the speech he gave at the time to mention his faith.
“First, I just want to thank God because without Him none of this would even be here,” he said.
Before heading to the Super Bowl in 2020, Mahomes told reporters, “Faith has always been big with me,” according to KMBC-TV
“As long as I’m doing everything the right way and the way that He would want me to do it, then I can walk off the field with my head held high and be able to be the man that I am,” he said then.
“I understand that He’s given me a lot of blessings in my life, and I’m trying to maximize them and glorify Him,” Mahomes said.
“In middle school, he got real involved with his youth group. He got saved. There was a night at church, he had his hands raised to the Lord and he was singing. I just felt overcome with this most awesome moment, more than any football game, because I knew where his heart truly is,” she said at the time.
This year’s Super Bowl includes two quarterbacks who are vocal about their faith.
Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts has said he could not succeed without God.
“I’ve just matured and realized that God is everything and He’s worthy of praise,” Hurts told CBS Sports in September. “You have to put Him at the center of everything that you do. That’s what I believe.
“All my spiritual wisdom — all of my wisdom as a whole — comes from Him, in some way, shape or form, whether that be passed down from my father, my mother, my grandmother. I just think, in all the things that we experience in life — good, bad or indifferent — you have to keep Him in the center.”
“God only made me one way,” he said. “That’s to be me. That’s to be Jalen Hurts.
“I think, being in this city, being the quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles, and just having the opportunity to play the game I love most, in the best city of football, I just go out there every day and I am who I am, and I keep God in the center, I give Him all the praise, I lean on Him all the time, and I know that everything unfolds the way it’s supposed to.”