The functional weirdness of Patrick Mahomes’s running style

LAS VEGAS – Patrick Mahomes runs as if he’s in competition for the title of World’s Fastest Waddler. He sashays and scurries as much as he sprints. His strut has birthed countless comical comparisons: He runs like he is holding a beer, like somebody is holding the door for him, like he is wearing skinny jeans for the first time, like he needs to use the restroom, like he never finished putting on his shoes.

Mahomes stands astride American sports as he saunters into the Super Bowl for the fourth time, trying to win his third at age 28, the quarterback of the most glamorous team in a league that is the country’s most powerful cultural force. He has reached a rarefied athletic pinnacle with an unusual athletic foundation. There’s no other way to say it: Mahomes runs funny.

The aesthetic may be meme-able and mockable, even to Mahomes himself. But his unusual running form is an asset. It allows him to stay a step ahead of pass rushers. It helps him avoid injury. It unlocks his wicked creativity. What he really runs like is one of the most functionally adept athletes on the planet.

“It doesn’t look the prettiest, so I think people think I’m slow,” Mahomes said. “It’s kind of deceptive. Sometimes the defense takes bad angles because they think they’re going to catch me faster than they do.”

The most visually striking trait of Mahomes’ running form is his upright torso. “I love that statement (that) he runs like he’s holding a beer,” University of Memphis biomechanics professor Max Paquette said. Observing Mahomes on television, Paquette believes the quarterback’s running posture provides a platform for the improvisational magic he creates.

When most athletes run, their heads bob as their bodies strain and their feet hit the ground. It muddles their vision – try to read this sentence while shaking your head. But Mahomes’ head remains relatively still, which provides a clearer picture of the field. It doesn’t just seem as if he sees more than other quarterbacks while on the run. He does.

“When he’s running that stable, like he wouldn’t drop an ounce of beer, he’s also keeping his visual system really stable,” Paquette said. “If you’re playing a sport, your head is moving, it’s really hard to visually scan the environment to really understand the environment. When he turns his head, it’s not moving around a ton. Because of that, he’s able to see more more quickly, and it allows him to predict things.”

Mahomes remains so balanced in his upper body because of how he moves his lower body. Paquette identified three key features: Mahomes takes short strides, keeps a wide base and runs on his toes. In sum, it creates the optical impression of a toddler scampering away after stealing the remote control.

“I run really weird, so people don’t think I’m running fast,” Mahomes said this year during an appearance on ESPN’s “ManningCast.” “But I’m fast enough.”

More aptly, Mahomes is fast enough because he runs really weird. It seems as if his sprint speed is perpetually slightly faster than whichever defender is chasing him. The phenomenon is grounded in truth and based on how he runs.

Mahomes reaches his top speed quickly, but a defender chasing him – especially a tall one – is unlikely to reach his own top speed as he tries to keep up with the quick directional changes Mahomes’ short, wide, toe-generated strides produce.

“Because his feet are on the ground more often in that acceleration phase, he’s able to apply force to the ground a lot and quickly,” Paquette said. “That’s Newton’s second law. That’s a simple physics problem. The people that chase him, typically defensive players that are slightly bigger, they can’t accelerate that fast. He looks like he’s not running that fast, and he’s not running that fast. He just accelerates so quickly it doesn’t matter if he’s running that fast, because he’s already gone.”

For some defenders, there is an added layer of frustration trying to chase Mahomes. “He’s deceptively fast,” 49ers pass rusher Nick Bosa said. “On tape, you see guys wary of hitting him because he runs like he’s going to slide. It’s not an excuse. But that kind of plays into it a little bit.”

Inside Chiefs meeting rooms, Mahomes has given a name to the moment he leaves faster defenders grasping at air. “He talks about his ‘boosties,’ ” offensive coordinator Matt Nagy said. Sometimes teammates will chide him for being caught from behind by a linebacker. More often, they celebrate his boosties.

“He’s awkwardly smooth,” Nagy said. “He doesn’t look like the most fluid guy when he’s out there, but he does just enough to make a guy stutter just enough so that he can accelerate.”

Mahomes’ short stride also helps keep him on the field. He has not missed a game with an injury in three years, and his running style may be why. He requires less force with each step he takes, Paquette said, which exerts less strain on his body and leaves him less susceptible to tearing ligaments and tendons.

Mahomes is a large man who steps like a small man. He would sprint faster if he used long strides, but that wouldn’t make him a more effective football player.

At the 2017 NFL scouting combine, Mahomes ran the 40-yard dash in 4.8 seconds, a pedestrian time for a quarterback. He ran the shuttle drill – 5 yards in one direction, 10 yards the other way, 5 yards back to the starting line – in 4.08 seconds. It was not only elite for a quarterback. It was 10th fastest of any player in Mahomes’ draft class, placing him among the quickest wideouts and cornerbacks in the NFL.

“I know it’s funny looking,” Paquette said. “But it’s really, really, really effective.”

A ‘baseball walk’

At the 2022 Pro Bowl, Philadelphia Eagles cornerback Darius Slay sidled next to Mahomes and mimicked his gait with exaggeration, swaying from side to side. Mahomes chuckled. “That’s my baseball walk,” he told Slay.

Adam Cook, Mahomes’ football coach at Whitehouse High in Texas, has a theory about his gait. Mahomes has run the same way since Cook first saw him, and Mahomes runs like he walks. “His posture is very upright, very confident,” Cook said. “His chest is bowed up. His butt is kind of hiked up.”

How might he have learned to walk like that? As a child, Mahomes trailed his father, a major league relief pitcher, to clubhouses and dugouts. There, he would have found role models to study and mimic. And relative to other athletes, a baseball player walks a lot. He mills around the batting cage, ambles to the on-deck circle, moseys out to his spot in the field. Baseball players tend to strut confidently – chest bowed up, someone might say.

“He had a front-row seat to some athletes where he said, ‘I want to be like that guy,’ ” Cook said of Mahomes. “Maybe he saw somebody walking, and that’s how he started walking.”

Ryan Tomlin, Mahomes’ high school basketball coach, once said he was “fast without being fast.” He could sneak up on ballhandlers for steals and create space against quicker defenders by varying his pace. Mahomes honed his athleticism playing whatever sport was in season; he briefly pitched at Texas Tech, and as a high school freshman he harbored dreams of playing point guard at Duke. His diverse athletic background distills into how he plays.

“Just working on his speed, he didn’t have a lot of time to do that because he was always playing ball,” Cook said. “A lot of his running style and things he does, he actually picked up on those fields.”

Even in high school, Mahomes rarely won with speed. Pat Mahomes Sr. once wondered aloud to Cook whether his son would be able to evade defensive linemen with faster 40 times once he got to college. But Mahomes’ agility translated in part because of his approach. Even as a young quarterback, he would eschew easy gains available on a scramble to dance behind the line and throw deep downfield.

“He was never that running quarterback,” Cook said. “He might have a 5-yard run in front of him, but he might turn it into a 50-yard pass.”

‘Savvy with his legs’

Mahomes’ selective approach to running has extended to the NFL. In the AFC championship game, he dodged Baltimore Ravens defenders for nearly 10 seconds before finding Travis Kelce for a crucial first down. He saves his rushing attempts for when they are needed most – such as, say, the Super Bowl.

During regular-season games, Mahomes has run 3.9 times per game for 20.2 yards. In the playoffs, his averages balloon to 5.7 rushes for 26.9 yards. In the Super Bowl four years ago, Coach Andy Reid’s game plan called for designed runs to slow down the 49ers’ ferocious pass rush. Mahomes ran the speed option four times. In all, he ran nine times for 29 yards, including a scramble that sparked a go-ahead touchdown drive in the fourth quarter.

“Patrick is savvy with his legs,” Nagy said. “He finds the right time to use them. It usually is in big moments. He’s not going to come out and run a 4.5 40 anytime soon. What he can do is make guys miss at certain times.”

Mahomes’ funky, choppy, stiff running form could be on display Sunday. It will provide a weapon for the Chiefs and a lesson for other athletes.

Paquette, the biomechanics professor, often tells students to keep open minds. He pointed out that legendary British distance runner Paula Radcliffe ran with an unusually wobbly upper body, that Usain Bolt’s stride was asymmetrical, that Olympic gold medalist Michael Johnson’s posture was oddly upright. “Something no coach would ever coach,” Paquette said.

Nobody would design a quarterback who runs like Mahomes. But then, nobody has seen a quarterback like him.

“Maybe that’s the secret to my speed,” Mahomes said. “I run not the way that everybody else runs.”