Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes did not beat around the bush when asked to respond to Las Vegas Raiders players mocking him with a muppet in his likeness.
"It's still early in the year, stuff like that happens," Mahomes stated bluntly at a press conference on Friday. "It'll get handled when it gets handled."
On Thursday, Raiders players paraded a Kermit the Frog puppet dressed in a Mahomes jersey with a wig. In a video, Raiders players shout "I'm here, I'm here," in a satirized version of the quarterback's frog-like voice.
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While the Chiefs are the reining Super Bowl champions, the Raiders did get the last laugh in the budding rivalry. They surprisingly bested Kansas City 20-14 on Christmas day of the 2023 season thanks to a pair of defensive touchdowns.
Admittedly, the Raiders could only muster 205 yards of total offense and averaged a dismal 2.1 yards per pass. The quarterback that day, then-rookie Aiden O'Connell, is still in contention for the Raiders starting gig in 2024 .
Provoking Mahomes might not be a sound strategy for coach Antonio Pierce's unproven Raiders squad. The Chiefs QB is fresh of a third Super Bowl title and third Super Bowl MVP award in five seasons.
Mahomes possesses a dominant 10-2 career record against the Raiders, which includes the franchise's time in Oakland. In those contests, he boasts a sparking 30-4 TD-INT ratio to go along with 297.8 passing yards per game.
A user on X noted how this "won’t age well when paddy throws for 350 over them." In a 41-14 shellacking of the Raiders back in November of 2021, Mahomes passed for 406 yards and six touchdowns.
The admittedly one-side rivalry was injected with some juice this offseason when Pierce said : "As long as I’m here, the Patrick Mahomes rules. You remember when [Michael] Jordan was going through it with the Pistons, all those guys in the ’80s before he became Michael Jordan, Air Jordan, the Pistons used to whip his ---."
Pierce was far more coy when asked about the Mahomes puppet: "“We addressed it as a team yesterday, and we nipped it in the bud. It’s over with.” It appears the second-year coach is trying to diffuse the situation
In a similar vein, Chiefs coach Andy Reid was also quick to shut down any puppet related chatter: "We don't spend a lot of time here with puppets."
Chiefs defensive end George Karlaftis also saw the video. “Yeah, we’ll see what happens when we play them, October 27 and November 29. Yeah, I’ve got the dates.”
The player wearing the puppet, rookie seventh-round safety Trey Taylor, is hardly a lock to crack the Raiders 53-man roster . He's listed behind current starting free safety Marcus Epps on the depth chart.
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