Patrick Mahomes on Chiefs' Success: 'It's Not About One Person'

Mahomes and Garoppolo will face off as starting quarterbacks in Super Bowl LIV on Sunday.

Patrick Mahomes and Jimmy Garoppolo will face off as the starting quarterbacks in Super Bowl LIV on Sunday. But while the quarterbacks for the Chiefs and 49ers have their stylistic differences, Mahomes says they have one big thing in common: they've both benefitted from good situations. 

"Being in the right organization with the right coaches, the right teammates ... being in this league, it's not about one person," Mahomes told reporters on Wednesday. "It's not about the quarterback. ... I think with both me and him, we've been put in a lot of great situations and we've tried to maximize that every day we get those opportunities. ... I think Jimmy would say the same thing."

Mahomes went on to praise Chiefs coach Andy Reid, who will have the opportunity to win the first Super Bowl of his career on Sunday. 

Reid's West Coast offense has clicked behind Mahomes's strong arm, elusiveness and ability to throw on the run. 

"I think I ended up in the perfect place," Mahomes said. "To have Coach Reid and these coaches around me, to have Alex Smith in front of me for a year and be able to learn from him and then obviously to have all the players I have around me, I'm in a place where the team was already a winning team. They had a lot of success and when I came in, I was able to just be who I am, and ended up winning a lot of football games early in my career."

"I hope I get to play the rest of my career there now," Mahomes continued. "I mean, just the people and how they accept you and how they care about you more as a person than they do as a player and how much passion they have for the Kansas City Chiefs, it's special and it's somewhere I want to be for the rest of my career."

49ers coach Kyle Shanahan's playbook likewise suits Garoppolo's accuracy and decision-making ability. 

Garoppolo is also in a privileged position where he can attempt a single-digit amount of passes and still win in a blowout—like he did in the NFC Championship Game against the Packers, which the 49ers won 37-20 behind 220 rushing yards and four touchdowns from running back Raheem Mostert. Garoppolo passed for just 77 yards in eight attempts.