“Throughout my whole football career, I have always known I wasn’t the fastest guy.”

You dream of your first NFL start when you’re a little kid, playing football in the backyard, but until you get there, you never know what to expect.

I didn’t start playing football a lot until I was in high school. I played it in seventh and eighth grade, but I didn’t play Pop Warner or anything.

I was a good student and stuff like that.

Kids in sports – it makes such an impact in life with the lessons that you learn.

I feel like, even if something goes wrong, I have confidence in myself and my team that we’ll fix it.

Until you get there, you never know what to expect.

East Texas isn’t known for producing quarterbacks. I was never really on the football circuit. I wasn’t the type of guy that put my name out there.

It’s a challenge for all quarterbacks, though: You want to make the big play; you want to throw a touchdown every single play. But at the same time, you have to know that it’s a process.

Good third-down teams are teams that usually have success in this league. –

It’s not like I mean to throw no-look passes. I think it kind of happens out of instinct. As I do it, I’m like, ‘Dang, I didn’t even mean to do that.

You see Tom Brady, you see Alex Smith, and you see all those guys in the pocket and how quick they are with their footwork and how they get the ball out fast. I have to get like that.

I just try to learn from every mistake that I make so that I never make them again.

The best thing about it is you’re showing kids that no matter where you grow up, what race you are, that you can achieve your dream.

I have a lot of guys around me that help make my job easier.

I just try to be the best Patrick Mahomes I can be.

You have to learn and develop from every experience you see on the field. I might see an unscouted blitz. I might see different coverages than I’m expecting. So I need to process and make those adjustments as I go.

In the end, it’s not about failure, it’s about how much you love what you do.

I would rather be a babysitter than a nursemaid.

When you have a passion for something then you tend not only to be better at it, but you work harder at it too.

I’ve always been aware that the image you patiently construct for an entire career can be ruined in a minute. It scares you a bit, but that’s the way things are.

Mercy,’ I love conceptually because I feel like you can either think about it as if it were a girl – which it sounds like it could be about a girl – but I like to picture it as ‘pleading for mercy for my career’ type of thing.

Just write every day of your life. Read intensely. Then see what happens. Most of my friends who are put on that diet have very pleasant careers.

You rarely come across the complete footballer, but Scholes is as close to it as you can get. One of my regrets is that the opportunity to play alongside him never presented itself during my career.

You can’t make somebody understand something if their salary depends upon them not understanding it.