“He Will Have the Last Laugh”: LeSean McCoy Claims the NFL Made a Big Mistake Snubbing Patrick Mahomes From the Pro Bowl

The 2024 season has not been a banner one for Patrick Mahomes by any means. But he still led his Kansas City Chiefs to an NFL-best 15-1 record. That, plus his reputation as arguably the most clutch player in the league right now would have made him Pro Bowl-worthy—one would think. However, his less-than-impressive stats resulted in him missing the Pro Bowl cut for the first time in his career. LeSean McCoy thinks that will serve as extra fuel for him come playoff time.

Speaking on FS1’s The Facility on Friday, “Shady” McCoy spoke about the ripple effect Mahomes’ Pro Bowl snub will have on the league. He argues that Mahomes will use that to get himself and his teammates even more riled up to prove the doubters wrong. As McCoy said, “the league is in trouble” if a two-time defending champion like Mahomes somehow enters the postseason with a chip on his shoulder.

“I know Pat… so when I saw [the Pro Bowl rosters] yesterday I said oooh, the league is in trouble. Because one thing about… the greatest players I’ve been around, the Toms, the Pats, they are super competitive. I’m talking about, they don’t lose nothing. Card games, chess, checkers, tic-tac-toe, they are a******s if they lose.”

The other three QBs who did make the AFC’s Pro Bowl roster—Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, and Joe Burrow—have a history with Patrick Mahomes. So, not only did Mahomes get snubbed, but he can say to himself that people think he’s not as good as his peers anymore after a somewhat subpar 2024 season by Mahomian standards.

“So now, you look at the Pro Bowl. He’ll be thinking ‘Oh, okay, so you think Joe Burrow’s better than me? Oh, wait, wait, you think Josh Allen, oh, you think he’s better than I am? Wait, timeout, so you think Lamar Jackson, you think he’s better than me? Cool.’ He can’t laugh right now though, he’ll get the last laugh, that’s who Patrick Mahomes is.”

McCoy played one season with Mahomes, a Super Bowl-winning campaign in 2019. He has intimate knowledge of how Mahomes operates, and he shared a perfect example of just how competitive the Chiefs QB is.

In 2019, the Chiefs were taking on the Bears, who’d traded up to draft Mitch Trubisky in the 2017 draft, allowing Mahomes to fall to No. 10. Mahomes never forgot that and made sure to pay Chicago back for their insult when they met in 2019.

“We’re playing the Bears, and Mitch Trubisky I think was the quarterback… He was so pissed off playing this game… We start playing, he scores a touchdown, he starts counting… He scores again, he starts doing it again… So, he was counting how many picks they’d passed him up [in the 2017 draft] and Chicago took Mitch Trubisky instead of Patrick Mahomes.”

McCoy compared Mahomes and his competitive fire to Tom Brady, but he could have also compared him to Michael Jordan. MJ’s competitive spirit is well-known. The doubt of others stoked the fires in his belly, pushing him to prove those people wrong. He famously fabricated insults he claimed his opponents said to him just to get himself all riled up for a game.

This is basically what Mahomes is going to do. Because all things being equal, Allen, Jackson, and Burrow pretty clearly deserved those Pro Bowl spots over Mahomes. A quick look at the numbers and the overall performance of those offenses makes that abundantly clear. There’s not much argument for Mahomes’ inclusion apart from his legacy.

And yet, Mahomes will tell himself it’s the slight of the century. And, like Shady said, that should worry the rest of the playoff field. Especially those rival AFC QBs.