Patrick Mahomes bracing for physical toll of 17-game season

Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes is preparing for a 17-game NFL season.

With the NFL expanding its regular season to 17 games, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes knows several adjustments will have to be made by him to deal with the physical toll of the expanded campaign.

“I mean obviously it’ll be different and it’ll be something that we’ll have to adjust to. But it’s something that we had talked about in the collective bargaining agreement,” Mahomes told Yahoo Finance Presents.

“Whatever your beliefs are you got to go out there and adjust, and do whatever you can to be the best football player you can be every single day. I’ll be trying to figure out ways to take care of my body more and more, so you can adjust your body for a 17-game regular season.

“You’ll have to change your day-to-day work, work ethic, work involvement and how much you’re going to put on your body every single day because you want to be in that Super Bowl again and you want to be playing for a championship and you want to make sure your body can take the workload of that and adding in another game is adding more to your body. So you have to make sure that you’re prepared.”

Patrick Mahomes is approaching an expanded season with the right mindset

Even if Mahomes is still in his mid-20s, he is well aware of how he has to take care of his body, especially with the advent of a 17-game regular season occurring in the heart of his prime as a professional. While adding a 17th game means more revenue and therefore more coin in every player’s pocket, it does come with a price — a most physical one that will be shared by all involved.

Football is a game of 100 percent injury. You will get hurt playing this game. However, no sport resonates more prolifically with the American public than gridiron football. From high school to college to pro, we can never get enough of it. While adding a 17th game to the season was a controversial move to begin with, at least star players like Mahomes are adjusting accordingly.

If Mahomes can embrace the challenges associated with a 17-game season, so can everyone else.