Sam McDowell: He's been the best player at Chiefs camp. Why aren't we talking about it more?

ST. JOSEPH, Mo. — Patrick Mahomes escaped the pocket and rolled right, but still with nothing emerging, he did what he does on most broken plays.

He improvised.

A pass hit a sprinting Kareem Hunt in stride over the middle of the field — the route too had been improvised — and if the whistle hadn’t blown shortly afterward to remind everyone it wasn’t a tackling drill, it probably would’ve gone for a pretty sizable gain.

Oh, I’m burying the lede, the most Mahomes of twists on the pass: He threw the ball behind his back.

A sideline of the best football players in the world erupted. A collection of coaches and backup quarterbacks stationed half a field away reacted as a fan in the stands might react. A play later, they still returned to the conversation, as though they had to make sure.

Did that really just happen?

I want to tell you about a player shining more than all others here in St. Joseph, somehow under the radar through the chaos of training camp and the intrigue of rookie left tackle Josh Simmons — until that player does something you’ve literally never seen before.

Patrick Mahomes has truly been spectacular this week. He has, quite obviously, set a high bar for that description, so let me adjust the review with that bar as the grading curve: Patrick Mahomes has truly been spectacular this week.

The last four Chiefs practices have been some of the best we’ve seen from him.

Ever.

“His arm,” tight end Travis Kelce told me, “is alive right now.”

A revenge-tour narrative will shadow Mahomes this season, leaving the explanation for anything he does well based on the conclusion of a year earlier.

In his third or fourth season, that probably would have made some sense. But that’s what’s noteworthy — remarkable, even — about the kind of training camp he’s had. He’s in his ninth season. A quarterback you’d expect to rank high in just about every category is starting to rank high in one you’d least expect: age.

He’s projected to be the ninth-oldest starting quarterback in the league when the season begins, depending on the outcome of a couple of battles in camps elsewhere. And he’s still clearly improving.

It’s the sort of thing we’d all be talking about — the sort of thing that would prevent us from talking about little else — if we didn’t have the preceding eight years. I get that. You might even ask whether it’s news when Mahomes has a great day at training camp.

To which I’d offer: Shouldn’t it still be relevant when he has among his best days?

That’s not just my take on it. Matt Nagy, the Chiefs’ offensive coordinator, said he “felt like” Monday’s practice “was one of our best as a group, and in particular, Pat.”

That was a day before the behind-the-back throw.

On Sunday, he effortlessly squeezed a pass into the arms of rookie Jalen Royals, who was darn-near blanketed on the play. Only a couple of throws later, linebacker Jack Cochrane smothered tight end Noah Gray, but Mahomes still drove a line-drive bullet over his head, hitting Gray in stride.

After a day off, in a 7-on-7 drill Tuesday, Mahomes made one of the most spectacular throws I’ve ever seen him make in a practice. Cornerback Chamarri Conner could not have played more perfect coverage on wide receiver Tyquan Thornton — he was actually running the corner route a step quicker than Thornton. Mahomes threw it anyway, because Conner took his eyes off the quarterback for a moment.

By the time he turned, the ball was past him, and Thornton dove into the picture to make the grab.

“Sometimes,” Thornton would later say, “he’ll make you open even if you’re not open.”

There’s the real meaning of all of this. It’s not a look backward. It’s a look forward.

Last year, Mahomes was the least aggressive quarterback in football in terms of a willingness to throw into tight coverage. Only 10.3% of his passes were classified as tight-window throws, per Next Gen Stats.

He’s taking chances this camp, and the results should demonstrate that he can afford to take a few more in games. To be clear, they should demonstrate that to himself.

Because everyone watching already knows it.

He’s made a couple of other plays this week that prompted defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo to ask him for feedback after a play. Why did you do that? How did you do that?

There are some built-in advantages to training camp in that sense, to be sure. Mahomes knows the Chiefs defense so well, even with a coordinator who has built a career out of disguising things, that when linebacker Nick Bolton makes a check at the line of scrimmage, he can be confident Mahomes knows what it means.

“Just how fast his mind is moving — it seems like he’s always a step ahead,” Kelce said.

When the Chiefs meet the Chargers in Brazil next month, it will likely be billed as the first time Mahomes steps onto the field since the most disappointing loss of his career.

It’s not true. Not really, anyway.

He’s been on the field for a few weeks now, and they’ve produced some of the best days he’s ever had. At some point during this career arc, head coach Andy Reid told his assistants not to take what they see every day for granted. “This isn’t normal,” he recalled telling them.

But what’s most telling? This hasn’t been a normal camp for him.

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