Kliff Kingsbury tried to get Patrick Mahomes to return to Texas Tech for senior season

There will be a mini-Texas Tech reunion Sunday in Glendale, Arizona, when the Chiefs face the Arizona Cardinals in the teams’ 2022 season opener.

Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes played at Texas Tech from 2014-16 and his coach was Kliff KIngsbury, who is now the Cardinals head coach.

“He’s a pretty decent player,” Kingsbury told reporters with a smile “It’ll be a little surreal going against him. But it’ll be fun. It’ll be fun for Texas Tech people as well.”

Kingsbury said he and Mahomes are part of a group text about Texas Tech and they stay in touch.

During Monday’s news conference, Kingsbury revealed he attempted to get Mahomes to return to Texas Tech for his senior season.

It’s laughable to think about now, but the NFL’s College Advisory Board gave Mahomes a second-round grade ahead of the 2017 Draft.

“The NFL telling him he’s just gonna go second round or later, so I tried to convince him to come back to school,” Kingsbury said of Mahomes.

Alas, Mahomes and his agents had a good feeling he’d hear his name well before the second round. That meant Kingsbury played the role of Larry David in attempting to get Mahomes back to Lubbock, Texas.

“It was like ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm.’ I think they knew something. ... I appreciate them giving me the opportunity, but it was a foregone conclusion,” Kingsbury said. “So I did my best.”

The Chiefs selected Mahomes with the 10th overall pick in the 2017 NFL Draft and he became the starter in 2018. Since then, Mahomes has won the NFL MVP, a Super Bowl MVP award and helped the Chiefs play host to the AFC Championship Game each year.

Mahomes’ success is no surprise to Kingsbury, who said he knew early on that Mahomes was a special player.

“Once I got around him, got to know him, worked with him at football camps, you could tell he just had some special ability,” Kingsbury said, “and the characteristics of a real winner, a real leader, and guys gravitated to him as soon as they were around and so we knew that he’d be a big get for us.”

Mahomes threw 41 touchdown passes with 10 interceptions as a junior, and Texas Tech finished with a 5-7 record. A year earlier with Mahomes at quarterback, the Red Raiders had a 7-6 record and lost to LSU in the Texas Bowl.

Texas Tech’s record may have scared some teams away from Mahomes, Kingsbury thinks.

“We didn’t have as much success,” he said. “Offensively we did. We scored a bunch of points, bunch of yards all that, but we didn’t have the wins maybe that could have brought the attention that it could have. But the guys that I trusted in the league and the guys that I knew, and with what they were telling me, I had a feeling that he was going to be just fine.”

Arizona hired Kingsbury away from Texas Tech in 2019, and although they’ll be on opposite sidelines Sunday, he’s glad for Mahomes’ success.

“I’m just really proud of the person more than anything, just watching how he’s grown up, the leadership qualities he shows on and off the field,” Kingsbury said. “I mean, anytime you watch him in any of those arenas, just how socially responsible he is, how he leads, how he treats people, the stuff he does in the community with charities. He runs the gamut of what you want a sports star to be like and carry himself, and so that’s been really special to watch that development.”