Mahomes, Webb not rivalry yet
worked out for him as a top 10 pick (10th overall to Kansas City) and I got drafted the same year (87th overall, third round by the Giants). But I had to be a great teammate. You can ask anybody in that whole facility. I never had a frown on my face and I was very complimentary and helping Pat every week. It wasn’t easy, but he’s a great guy and a great teammate, so it was easier than it could have been.”
Webb responded by graduating in three years with a degree in Exercise & Sport Sciences and transferring to Cal to reassert himself as a Division I starter and an NFL prospect. He said he became “more driven because of” losing his opportunity at Texas Tech but that he never held anything against Mahomes.
“It wasn’t bad. I wasn’t mad at him. I wasn’t mad at anybody. I was just anxious,” Webb said of transferring, something he never could have foreseen entering college. “I rooted Pat on his last year at Tech, my last year at Cal. I watched every Tech game on film and live TV. He and I are really y close. We would meet together every day, we were in the same room with Kliff. That was a great room.”
Fast forward to the present and Webb and Mahomes find themselves in similar situations as rookie QBs, learning from established veterans and waiting their turn — though Mahomes is closer to knocking on the door to play with speculation that Smith could be traded or released prior to the final year of his current deal, while the two-time Super Bowl winner Manning has two more years left on his contract.
Mahomes, coach Andy Reid said in a conference call Wednesday, has been taking “mainly the scout team reps.” But Reid assured that the Chiefs coaches “spend quite a bit of time with him, making sure he’s on top of everything.”
“He’s done a great job with it,” Reid said of Mahomes. “He’s competitive, he stays on top of things, everybody can see that he’s a talented kid and he wants to be good. He’s very fortunate, I think, to be in a situation where he can see how Alex goes about doing the job. That’s priceless.”
Webb is limited in snaps at practice since Geno Smith is ahead of him backing up Manning. But the Giants similarly have found ways to get the ball in his hands, including an “opportunity period” in training camp that Ben McAdoo specifically designed to work in Webb.
Webb and Mahomes, meanwhile, maintain their friendship. Webb said they “ate together every meal” at the NFL Combine in March. He went out to dinner with Mahomes and his girlfriend at the NFLPA’s Rookie Premiere in May in Beverly Hills. And they Snapchatted recently, just to stay in touch amid their busy new NFL lives.