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Adam Teicher, ESPN Staff Writer
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Patrick Mahomes said his new contract strikes the right balance between giving him a raise and allowing the Kansas City Chiefs to continue to build a competitive team around him.
“You have to watch and see what what’s going on around the league and find that right spot, and I thought we found a good one in this negotiation that we did [in] that we will be able to still keep cap space for other guys to get signed,” said Mahomes, who now will be paid $210.6 million over the next four seasons — the highest total in the league.
“… I’m glad that now I can just go out there and play football. You get that security — and I already had it — but just to get a little bump and then be able to go back out there and just play football, I’m excited for it.”
Mahomes said he felt a responsibility to the NFL’s other top quarterbacks to continue to raise the salary bar after recent deals by Lamar Jackson, Justin Herbert and Joe Burrow.
“You’ve got to keep the bar going; you got to keep it moving,” Mahomes said. “I don’t want people to be negotiated against me, and so that’s the reason that you do something like I did this last week … just trying to keep the market moving in the right direction, training in the right direction, so not only me but other quarterbacks in other positions can get paid the money that they deserve.”
Mahomes has said he will eventually be judged by how many games and championships he wins and not by how much money he is paid. He indicated this contract would allow him to do both.
“I always talk about not having regrets,” Mahomes said. “The money is the money. It’s awesome. It’s amazing. I know I can do a lot of great things not only for myself but for people that have given me so much. But at the end of the day, I’m going to be looked back on how I played the game, and I hope that that’s with intensity and leaving everything out there, and hopefully that means winning a lot of football games.”