ST. JOSEPH, Mo. — A year ago, the Chiefs made Creed Humphrey the highest-paid center in the NFL — a fine status symbol he funneled into a first-team All-Pro season.

That rippled into a third straight year of being recognized by Pro Football Focus as the best there is today at his position, and as the only center ranked among the league’s 100 top current players (93rd) in the most recent iteration of the annual list.

For that matter, he’s been honored by the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and his hometown of Shawnee, Okla., with “Creed Humphrey Day” and appeared in an unaired Saturday Night Live skit.

He’s been in a commercial with Patrick Mahomes and is somewhat a folk hero among Chiefs fans — who called out his name, clamoring for him on Thursday at the Chiefs’ Missouri Western training camp.

So, sure, Humphrey appreciates the blessings and love and all.

But as a profoundly driven person all his life, such affirmations aren’t cause for pause but merely more propellant.

“You can never stop improving; you can never reach the top,” he said.

With a deft comic delivery a moment later, he added that he remains “so hungry I could eat (nearby Chiefs team reporter) Matt McMullen.”

Amusing as the line was, turns out it also was a revealing snapshot of how Humphrey came to be such a force and vital cog for the Chiefs.

Speaking with The Kansas City Star later, he elaborated on a certain intrinsic motivation that helps explain not just his remarkable physical prowess, but also the astute cerebral capacity it takes to play the position.

“What has always driven me is that I want to become the best version of myself I can become,” he said. “For me, it’s not about all the outside noise. It’s not about accolades.

“For me, if I know there’s something that I can work on, I want to get better at it.”

Simple and modest and perhaps even trite as that might sound, the notion is the through line of why he is where he is and who he is.

It’s why he earned a 32 on his ACT (in the 97th percentile) and would have been valedictorian or salutatorian of his high school class if he hadn’t left a semester early for the University of Oklahoma, his parents said.

It’s why he liked to learn things not necessarily to ace tests, but to — gasp — gain knowledge and understand from the ground up, as his father put it.

That innate curiosity and inspiration is why his parents laughed when I asked them a while back about how much they’d had to emphasize academics or effort with Creed (or his older brother, Gage).

“I never had to remind him of what his goals were,” his father, Chad, said by phone shortly before the Super Bowl. “I never had to wake him up early to go to practices. He did it on his own.”

In fact …

“If we had to drive him somewhere,” he added, “he would come in and wake us up to take him.”

When I asked what planet Creed came from, his father laughed and said “I have no idea.”

Somewhat easier to track is how Humphrey became a strikingly nimble 6-foot-4, 300-pound man who in high school was playing some tight end and running back before settling on the role in which he has few peers today.

It starts with wrestling, the grueling sport in which Chad Humphrey became a three-time Division II All-America at Central Oklahoma and first coached his boys.

Creed was around 4 or so when he’d go to the practices of Gage, who became an all-state wrestler in high school.

Next thing you know, their mother, Melisa, said, Creed would be climbing all over the coaches as if he were competing himself.

By the time he was in fifth grade, Chad Humphrey, a software developer, reckoned Creed “was probably one of the better wrestlers in the nation.”

While he soon pulled back from the sport to focus more on football, wrestling left an indelible influence on him.

And not just in the sense that when he returned to it after years away he reached the Oklahoma state title match before losing in a tiebreaker to a three-time state champ.

Among the exacting standards wrestling promotes, Chad Humphrey said, are intense mental toughness and being reliant on yourself.

Then there’s the physical elements of balance and force that Creed credits to this day for why he’s flourishing in the NFL.

“I credit wrestling a ton for my game,” he said. “Understanding leverage, leverage points on a body, how to move people, all those things. Also just the mental toughness. …

“Even if you’re not feeling your best, if you’re tired, worn out physically, all those things, you can use your mental toughness to get past all that and keep competing and keep staying at the top.”

By continuing to compete with himself — a young man as distinct as the name his parents selected for him after seeing it in a book.

“I know they were fans of ‘Rocky’ ” he said, referring to the classic movies featuring Apollo Creed. “And they were fans of the band ‘Creed.’ So I’m sure when they saw it in the baby book, they were like, ‘That’s sweet.’ ”

Since joining the Chiefs, he’s been on stage with his namesake band (last year at the T-Mobile Center) and even met a few other youngsters named Creed back home.

“I think they were named after me,” he said, smiling.

Singular as he forever will remain.

“He always marched to his own beat,” Melisa said, “that’s for sure.”

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