Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes responds to Tyreek Hill’s surprising complaints about playing for Kansas City

If you were surprised to hear Tyreek Hill complain about his time with the Chiefs, you weren’t the only one. So was Patrick Mahomes. 

In his first interview since Hill’s comments were released, Mahomes was asked about what his former teammate had to say about his time with the Chiefs. What he heard seemed to catch him off guard.

“I’m surprised a little just because I felt like we love Tyreek here,” Mahomes told reporters Thursday. “We’ve always loved him, we still love him. I saw him out at Formula 1 in Miami and everything like that, but I’m sure it had something to do with trying to get his podcast some stuff and get it rolling. But definitely, I still love Tyreek. He’s a one-of-a-kind player.”

If you missed Hill’s comments, he made them on the debut episode of his podcast over the weekend. During the show, Hill said his relationship with the Chiefs started to fall apart because he wasn’t getting the ball enough. 

“If teams are gonna give us favorable one-on-one matches against their best corner, I don’t see why teams don’t utilize their best receiver,” Hill said. “And that’s where probably like me and the Chiefs fell apart right there. When I’m like, yo, I don’t mean to talk or be a diva in some situation, but can I see the pill some time, please? Just give me the ball, please.”

Hill’s agent, Drew Rosenhaus, added the receiver felt “underutilized” at times during the 2022 season.

According to Mahomes, the reason Hill was getting the ball less is because defenses were accounting for him more. 

“When you’re the competitor that he is — that’s the thing I loved about Tyreek and I still love, is that he wants to win — and I feel like with the coverages that we were getting, defenses were really accounting for him, so we had to go other places,” Mahomes said. “But when he’s a competitor like that, you want to have a chance to impact the game. So I know he wanted to get the ball as much as possible so he could help us win. It wasn’t a selfish thing. We were winning football games, especially at the end of the season, so I didn’t think he really kind of brought that to our attention, but now, we just kind of move on and we keep going with the guys that we have here and we try to keep winning football games.”

Mahomes also pointed out that Andy Reid’s offense isn’t built around getting the ball to just one person. 

“As you know in Coach Reid’s offense, it takes the whole team,” Mahomes said. “This offense was rolling before I got here. This offense was rolling when I was a young Cowboy fan watching the Eagles beat up on the Cowboys. It’s an offense that’s more than one player and that includes myself.”

One other thing Mahomes said is that he won’t be taking Hill’s complaints to heart. 

“It’s something where I’m sure he’s trying to show that he loves where he’s at in Miami,” Mahomes said. “He loves his teammates.”

If Hill was upset about his touches in Kansas City, that could make things awkward in Miami, because things could get even worse there. Hill finished with 111 receptions in 2021, and it’s not going to be easy to top that number considering he’ll be playing in an offense with Jaylen Waddle, who caught 104 passes in 2021. 

Only two teams over the past 10 years (2014 Broncos, 2018 Steelers) have produced two receivers who both finished the year with at least 100 receptions in the same season, which means it’s highly likely that either Waddle or Hill will see their production decline in 2022. Basically, the same complaints Hill has made about the Chiefs could soon be complaints he’s also making about the Dolphins.  

Hill also said Tua Tagovailoa is a more accurate passer than Mahomes, which is an interesting thing to say considering he still hasn’t played an actual game with his new quarterback. Unfortunately for football fans, the Dolphins and Chiefs won’t be playing each other this year unless they meet up in the playoffs.