Partnering up with Patrick Mahomes on the Kansas City Chiefs helped establish Tyreek Hill as a top wide receiver in the NFL.
Through four seasons with Mahomes as the starter, Hill averaged 86 receptions for 1,214 yards and 11 scores.
This past offseason, when the Chiefs failed to pay him what he thought he was worth, Hill forced a trade to the Miami Dolphins.
Initially, the separation seemed fairly cordial. Mahomes said nice things about Hill. Hill said nice things about Mahomes.
Then something changed.
A few weeks ago, Hill made the surprising decision to go on a podcast and call out both Mahomes and the Chiefs’ coaches over what he clearly perceived as slights.
On Thursday, during a session with the media, Mahomes responded.
“I’m surprised a little just because I felt like we love Tyreek here. We’ve always loved him. We still love him,” Mahomes said.
“I saw him out at Formula 1 in Miami and everything like that. But I’m sure it had something to do with trying to get his podcast some stuff, get it rolling. But definitely I still love Tyreek. He’s a one-of-a-kind player.
“But as you know in coach Reid’s offense, it takes the whole team. This offense was rolling before I got here. This offense was rolling when I was a young Cowboys fan watching the Eagles beat up on the Cowboys. So I mean, it’s an offense that’s more than one player — and that includes myself.”
For what it’s worth, it seems like Mahomes isn’t reading into the situation too deeply.
“So it’s something where I’m sure he’s trying to show that he loves where he’s at in Miami. He loves his teammates,” Mahomes added. “But at the end of the day, it’s just going out there and playing football. And you kind of let other people talk about who’s the best and all that different type of stuff.”
That said, Mahomes did make it a point to clear the air.
“Obviously, when you’re the competitor that he is — that’s the thing I loved about Tyreek and I still love, is he wants to win. And I feel like with the coverages that we were getting, defenses were really accounting for him, so we had to go other places,” Mahomes continued.
“But when he’s a competitor like that, you want to have a chance to impact the game. So I know he wanted to get the ball as much as possible so he could help us win. It wasn’t a selfish thing.
“But it definitely — it didn’t seem — I mean, we were winning football games, especially at the end of the season. So I didn’t think he really kind of brought that to our attention. But now we just kind of move on and we keep going with the guys that we have here and we try to win football games.”
The confusion here on Mahomes’ part is understandable. And not just because everything seemed fine between him and Hill until Hill randomly decided that it wasn’t.
Hill led the squad in targets last year. It’s not like Mahomes was avoiding getting him the ball. He was unequivocally treated as the No. 1 receiver on the roster for the duration of his time in Kansas City. No question about it.
This rewriting of history is straight up odd.
Will Hill and Mahomes be able to link up and ultimately get on the same page at some point in the foreseeable future?
Time will tell.
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