WHOOP Podcast - The Mind of Mahomes with Performance Coach, Bobby Stroupe

Episode Date: February 9, 2024

 It is Super Bowl week and once again WHOOP Founder and CEO, Will Ahmed, is joined by the incredible Bobby Stroupe. Bobby is the Founder of Athlete Performance Enhancement Center (APEC) and is the trainer of two-time Super Bowl Champion, Patrick Mahomes. Coach Stroupe and his team have worked with and supported over 300 professional athletes across 6 different sports including World Series Champions, Super Bowl Champions, and first-round picks in both the NFL and MLB. Will and Bobby discuss how Bobby started working with Patrick (3:15), their “gymnastica” training style (6:05), tapping into the flow state (8:53), dealing with sleep and recovery throughout the season (10:43), preparing for gameday and the playoffs (14:53), sleep efficiency vs sleep duration (27:50), similarities between the Chiefs and the Patriots (29:19), Bobby’s thoughts on the 49ers (35:01), and understanding different play styles (37:26).Support the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

What's up, folks? Welcome back to the Whoop podcast. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of Whoop, and we're still on a mission to unlock human performance. For those Whoop members listening, we are introducing our latest update to weekly plans, which is a new way for you to set weekly plans across sleep, strain, activities, and behaviors,

and see your progress against them. How does it work? Well, at the beginning of every week, you can choose your plan for the week based on what you need most. Could be more sleep, could be more exercise, could be introducing new behaviors. Whoop will give you some recommendations, keep you accountable, and you can follow that all week long. So check that out. Make sure you're on the latest Woop app. It's Super Bowl Week, which means, of course, Patrick Mahomes is headed to the Super Bowl.

Patrick, longtime Woop member. and who do we have on? But Bobby Stroop, his longtime trainer and founder of Athlete Performance Enhancement Center, APEC. We go all things Patrick Mahomes, all things training. Bobby gives us a lot of his feedback on what it's going to take to win this weekend. Specifically, Bobby and I discuss how they started working together. Literally, Bobby's been training Patrick since he was nine.

They train in their Gymnastica style, which is all about bending, came to life on the field in the AFC champion championship game versus the Ravens. How Bobby deals with sleep and recovery throughout the season versus the playoffs. Spoiler, they were reducing strain by 40% during the playoffs. Pretty amazing. The art of speeding the body up ahead of games. So there's an ABC in terms of three different types of workouts. Bobby really goes deep on this. Pretty fascinating.

listen for what the C is. That's how you get your body jacked up. Patrick's belief that he can win any game, that inner belief system, some of the parallels between the Chiefs and the Patriots. We go into the matchup against the 49ers and what Bobby anticipates for the game. A reminder of your question you want to see answered on the podcast,

email us podcast www.com. Call us 508-443-495-2. Good luck to Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs this weekend. And with that, here is my conversation with Bobby Strip. Bobby, welcome back to the Whoop Podcast. Man, it's great to be on. We got to make this the annual tradition.

We got to make it to the Super Bowl, but then you've got to get on the podcast. Well, it feels like an annual tradition of both because your man now is four Super Bowls in the last five years, six AFC championship games. I mean, it's pretty unbelievable, the resume. Yeah, I mean, he's, it's remarkable what he's doing. I think, you know, he's 28, so we're just getting started. But you couldn't ask for a better start and a great opportunity this week against 49ers, for sure. When did the two of you first meet or start working together, you and Patrick Mobs? Yeah, Patrick was nine years old.

So we've been together a long time. I've seen him through a lot of his stages, you know, was able to see him with his friend group and his parents and just through the whole process of, you know, middle school and high school. And it's pretty, it's pretty incredible to see, you know, where we're at, where we're at now. I would never thought that we would be doing this at this point, but here we are. And I didn't realize you had known him for so long in his life. Were there any inflections along the way where you're like, yeah, this guy's going to win Super Bowls one day, or has it been more of a gradual process? You know, I think it's hard to think that way when you've got a kid in front of you, right?

But I had some great mentors and people in my life that really try to instill into me to, you know, treat everybody like they're your dream client. Like they're, you know, for me, it was Michael Jordan. Treat everyone like they're that athlete. and we really tried to do that. And, you know, no one knows what a kid is going to grow up to be, but he had all the makings of, you know, someone that was special from a standpoint of being really addicted to improvement as the main thing.

And he just always had a great attitude. Socially, it was just good with people. I had a lot of type A personalities around him. And so he was never a guy that talked a lot, but very competitive. And, you know, there were some moments where you could see, that he had some special qualities but no one no one could take that and make that jump and say this guy's going to play at four Super Bowls before he's 28 unbelievable so last week

that raven's game there was a a clip that kind of went viral and you shared it as well where you know Patrick's getting tackled and it's a pretty awkward looking tackle like he he really finds himself twisted and turned upside down and you shared a video which i thought was appropriate of some of the training that the two of you do together and one of the you know the images was this video of patrick mohomes like completely upside down you know flexing um his back and really in like a position that you might be more familiar seeing a yoga instructor and then a professional football player, just talk a little bit about how you're clearly training him in a different way and how it also can lead to perhaps some of the resilience that we saw even last weekend,

where to me it looked like that was a play that could have been an injury, and yet he was totally fine. Well, you're always fortunate to come out of a playoff game healthy, and I don't know how much I believe in injury prevention, but I think there's a responsibility in coming with, comes with watching the game and looking at the demands of the sport, you know, as a first principle. But I think beyond that, you have to look at how this individual chooses to play the game. And the way that Patrick plays this game is with the reckless abandon and with the fight that's very unique. And the way he moves his body and the positions he puts himself in, I think a lot of players will protect himself from those circumstances. And

it didn't take me very long in this journey with him to realize that these things aren't going to change so what we have to do is adapt to the way that he plays the game and that means that comes with an elevated sense of mobility flexibility and stability in ways that are more accustomed for you know gymnastics athletes and people along those those lines and so we started down that journey not long ago a few years ago And it really helped him because the way that his body bends and the way that he gets hit and the way that he plays, he finds himself these precarious situations where, you know, he's got to be gumby. He's got to be someone that can bend in ways that it just doesn't look like the body should be able to bend. And so every day after the game, and once a week in the off season, we go through our regimen, we call it Gymnastica, where we go for joint mobility.

we go for spine mobility in ways that I think people look at and think it's very out of the box, but it's become so routine to us to do the backbends, to do the walking backbends on the wall, the rotational backbends, the upside down crawls. I mean, it's a once a week thing year-round. And no matter what experience we have in the game, no matter if he's hurt, no matter if he's not, these are things that we visit on a weekly basis. And you can call it getting comfortable and the uncomfortable. you can call it flexibility training you can call it gymnastics but for us it's it's routine

and regimen and to the point where we feel like he is neurologically and physiologically prepared to go to some of these places that maybe some other athletes aren't well that came through i mean and watching some highlights just from last weekend but i think even if you look his broader mobility in games. There are these moments where he looks like he's maybe off balance or he looks like he's about to be tackled. And then all of a sudden there's a little,

it's almost like a little subtlety. It almost looks like the game slows down for a second. And then next thing you know, he's got that extra three yards or something. Do you know what I'm talking about? Absolutely. You know, Patrick's got this in a ability to tap into that flow state that athletes rarely hit you know one time in their career and there's been books written about this probably my favorite one is the rise of Superman Stephen Colter wrote and it in and what he talks

about often is that ex-game athletes that are able to tap into this higher level of focus and really they can make changes on the fly because it's life and death and so their body senses that for Patrick he's able to tap into that more than than a lot of other athletes and I think that you know just the way he slows the game down it really what it is is he's an elite problem solver and the way he looks at things as different than anyone that i've ever known and that he just doesn't shut the door on opportunities in any given play and he's incredibly open-minded to what's going to happen and i think what limits some athletes is these expectations even great expectations of what is going to happen in a play can sometimes keep you from being open-minded

enough to the possibilities of what could be. And I think Patrick is really, really good at being optimistic and when things don't go perfectly in a play, just knowing that he's going to find a way to make something happen. And it's just brilliant to watch. And he really, some of these two-yard, one-yard plays are brilliant. And they add up in the course of a game and the course of the season. And, you know, we're seeing in the course of the career, they add up to the difference

between good and great. Well, the two of you have been a long-time whoop guys, which of course we love and we love the partnership. Can you describe a little bit how you think about sleep and recovery for Patrick during the season and then we can talk about the playoffs? Yeah, I think it's changed over time. We've talked about this in a few past podcast about, you know, regardless of how the the score is on the game day, what I'm looking at is I'm looking at an undulating wave

throughout the season. We're not going to hit 95% every game day. And that's okay, because if we did, we're leaving neurological and physiological development on the tape because our goal is to peak in the Super Bowl. That's the goal. That's where we're at right now. And so what we're trying to find is ways to balance this continued development in physical, you know, neurological peaking without leaving those processes out there. And so we started with that. And last year, we really got a lot of those concepts down. We were able to do that in spite of an injury. But this year's been different in the way that we look at this data and look at this device and the ways to utilize this and that we wanted to hit more quality sleep during the week this

year instead of just trying to get those two to three days before the game, especially the night before. And what we found is the more days we could stack green during the week, I mean, especially on a Monday night or Tuesday night, you know, or Wednesday night, what we found is that more optimal preparation during practice, and that was translating into better performances in the game almost more than the score the night before, from the night before. And there were some things that were anomalies that you can go back and we can look and see, but, you know, people talked about that Denver game and that he was sick, but I don't think people understand when you have a 1% recovery score,

that's an incredible deficit to overcome. You know, I've seen him go out and perform well with 40%, but 1% will. I mean, you could speak to that. Wow. He had a 1% before that Broncos game. He had 1% the morning of the Broncos game. And I got a text from him, you know, everyone, Everyone around us was sick that week, but I was not sick. Patrick was not sick. And everything was fine. He leaves on Friday. You know, he gets in. He gets in. And then Saturday night, he gets in. And then Saturday night, I want to say it's 10.30 or 11 at night. He says, man, I can't hold anything down. I'm, I'm really sick. I'm throwing up. And I thought, oh, man. And I know everybody's all hands were on deck. But I know that he could not, he could not get himself back.

recovered he went out there in a state that he's never played a game in and it wasn't great there's no excuse the Broncos were better that day but there is a reality in that he wasn't just a little bit sick I mean this guy was

in a spot that a few of us could go out and play a game this wasn't just you know flew the third day of it or one night of food poisoning this is 1% is very serious Yeah, I've been on whoop now for as long as anyone, and I've actually never gotten a 1%.

So, you know, a variety of flus and COVID and hangovers still hadn't gotten me, gotten me the 1%. So I can only imagine how hard it was to play that game. He's a tough dude, but that helps explain the loss to the Broncos for our audience. Yeah, I mean, I think the Broncos played a great game, but that definitely didn't help us that day. Yeah, that's for sure. So, you know, it's interesting looking at some of Patrick's data this year. Like, it looks like he's in this, like, 65 to 75% sleep performance range. It looks like, you know, averaging around 16 strain for a lot of the season.

And then it starts to come down a little bit. in January, from a strain standpoint, I imagine maybe that's a little bit lighter training during the week. Yeah, so when we get toward the playoffs and really the week before the playoffs, if we know we're going to make it, and then in the playoffs in particular, we cut everything down by about 40%. So you start that first week of playoffs, we're going into it at about 60% of your regular volume, and we're low volume anyway during the season. And so you're talking about any movements that we do, whether it's backbends, you know, steel rolls, dead hangs, dead lists. It doesn't matter. If it was six reps, we're down to two. And so for a lot of people,

I think that that would feel like, well, why are we doing these things? Because you're only doing two reps in one set, or you're doing three reps in one set. And I think it's important for the body to continue doing routine. And a lot of it is a neurological state at this point. The hay is in the barn from, you know, a lot of these aspects, when you look at strength residuals, you can keep max strength for, you know, 20 days a lot of the times, especially if you're well-trained. But mobility and flexibility, a lot of that has to do with the neurological state, parasympathetic, sympathetic tongue, breathing patterns, awakening tissues, making sure that the facial alignment's there. And sometimes when you do these movements, it hydrates these tissues.

It helps distribute nutrients throughout the body. And so we're doing these things. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, we're doing these things for an awakening, not necessarily a physical adaptation at this point. You know, that A day where it normally would take us, I don't know, an hour and 30 minutes just to do our mobility work. I mean, we're down to 30 minutes max, no sweating, nothing. This is playoffs week one. And you get down to this last week, and you're talking about an 18 to 20 minute workout that used to

be an hour and a half at regular points in the season. And that's part for the course in the playoffs and that you want to do every single thing that you normally do, but you want to do the least amount possible. Isn't that is cliche? People will say this, but we literally will do one to three reps at this point because even on a max strength deadlift, we're still going to do everything. We're going to go through our process where you mobilize the body and we tighten the body back up because mobility and

flexibility is health but tension is performance and that's a hard thing concept for some people but you mobilize and then you create that tension and that's that performance that you want and then you've got to speed the system up last the last day the week and that's our process

and we're going to do it even if it's at a minimum dose when you say speed the system up what does that mean and what day of the week are you talking about yeah so we have the day and B day and the C day that's been well documented and in Netflix they highlighted some of that unfortunately in the Netflix documentary day they showed me talking about it but then they showed clips that didn't match the days so it created some confusion you know I'm talking about

creating mobility and you know the elasticity and tissue extensibility and they're showing him to a rapid firearm jump on a vertical mat which is got this not doesn't fit in the same day and is not the same thing. So what I mean by speeding it up is the day after the game, you want to do movements that are as opposite from football as possible. It needs to be foreign to football, but local and grounding for the human body, meaning we are trying to get the human body back to zero. So all barefoot, all mobility, all get everything back. If you were to a football player, let's get you in the best function that we can as a human being. I don't want any stiffness in the neck.

I don't want anything in the spine, the wrist. We're checking everything. Finger flexibility, big toe, ankle, you know, mobility, femur head, everything, humorous, all the way up. Tuesday we come back, or that B day, we come back and build that tension, build all the things that create power. And then if we have the opportunities, we work max strength capabilities at least one to two to three lifts or anything that he's healthy enough to do,

come back if it's a sunday game we're doing friday or friday afternoon because speed and high level power i'm talking sub 20% loads on power so you're talking high velocity movements faster than he move in the game so any implement that we use it's going to be faster than he would move in the game so that the game feels slower physically and neurologically and then from a running speed standpoint anything we can do over speed that's faster than he's going to run in the game because quarterbacks aren't out of control with their movement. They don't run backwards as fast as they can in the play. Everything is calculated.

There's visual, perceptual components to running in the open field. So it's not the same as running a 200 meter dash or a 10-yard sprint. So what we want to do on this day is do the minimal on this day where you speed it up. But everything's got to be his absolute best and his fastest. Because what that does, it puts your neurological system in a heightened state that you're going to stay at for around 36 to 48 hours. sometimes some athletes can hold closer to 72 but not many what I've learned with Patrick is he can hold it for almost three days and you can really see that and so I'm talking about curvilinear sprints back pedal turns swinging a light bat you know he can

get it up to 140 miles an hour each way going you know two pound med balls 30 38 42 miles an hour you know doing it if he's doing say he can do a 600 pound deadlift on Tuesday, which he does during the season at times, you know, we'll cycle up and cycle down, even in the playoffs. Maybe for our whole set on a Tuesday, we do three reps. We go 525, 595, 625. And those are our three reps, literally. And then on Friday we come back, his deadlift sets could be 55 pounds, trying to get

three meters per second round jump. So there's complete opposite. And you're doing different things. When you're maximally loading the body, you're primarily working on deceleration, force absorption, force transmission, muscle structures. That's what you're really doing.

But when you come back and you work at those high velocities, tendon, ligament density, proporeostection, you know, Golgi tendon organs and your proceeding corpus and all these different things and your perceptive abilities get you this height. state, you know, for as humans, we're meant to be alarmed. And the more alarmed, our physical

prowess elevates. It's this neurotropic growth factor, this endothelial growth, all these different things that happen when you have a threat to your tribe, when you need food, there's somebody invading your camp. Like, so when that happens, it's not like we were created to just have this heightened state for 15 minutes. We're on alert for a while. And then the body starts to slowly calm down. Well, I don't want him to calm down until the confetti's fall. that's the that's the idea and so that's why we need that late week workout because if we don't get that you know we've got we've got a chance of coming out flat not not because he's not emotionally into it but because tissues and neurological processes and hormonal processes all these

things you know it's like it's like looking at a someone that is a producer in front of all these triggers and buttons that they're you know they got the talent in there they're doing all these things but they're trying to tune everything that's what we're trying to create in this programming with his bodies that we can't have it all on a Monday you know we can't so we got to do what it is that we're doing and know that you know what's crazy about our A day work is it is at the detriment it is actually the opposite of what we want him to be at the game it's slow it's East, he's too much bend, too much this, too much that. You know, when you're too flexible, you have not enough integrity or what we call

10thegri to take contact. So it's not good. That's why just being flexible is not the way. That's a good way to be weak. And then what we do on that B day is the opposite of, you know, that A day. And so it's at the detriment of that. But we're asking the body to level this out. And then on C day, it's just turning all the way up.

and whatever we are we're going to be the best at what we're at that fascinating and just in terms of days of the week what day is a b and c a day is if it's a sunday to sunday week now you know these Thursday games Saturday games that creates a and if we want to get into that that creates a whole another you know approach and audits system we got to make some we got to make some decisions on the fly but if it's a normal Sunday to Sunday week you're talking about Monday is an A day Tuesday is a B day and then Friday is a B day and then Friday is a are singing on a normal week now right and so you've got that 48 hour window right yeah you've got that 48 hour window to your point of your body or patrick's body remembering the neurological

changes you've made that's right and there this is not you know we didn't invent that concept and track and field athletes for Olympic preparation it ain't been on to this for a long time Dan Path probably pointed me to this many years ago and saying, you know, there are track athletes that will go practice starts in the morning if they've got an event that night. And that's how in tune their bodies are. Their bodies are that fleeting the speed. So they could get up to 60 meters in a full speed run within 12 hours of their competition. Now, football athletes are a little more sensitive than that, and that that could affect them in a different way. And so you have to look at, well, you basically have to find what works for that individual.

I know some individuals that I've consulted with that they have to do it the day before the day or it doesn't hold. And I know some that are sensitive enough to where the body will go into a depressed date if we don't do it on like a Thursday. And so it really is a trial and error. I mean, there are some things that you think you think

and then you have to try. You have to try these things out and see where the athletes hits on that paradigm and then you've got to hone in on that. And luckily, Patrick and I, we've got so much data and so much history that you know I know it's funny he walks in and I tell him how much he weighs every time he walks in I know exactly how much he weighs and he laughs and I laugh every time I'm like you're

21 yeah you're 21 8 you're 218 you're 226 what are we doing you know it's like it's funny we know we know each other a little too well what's up folks if you are enjoying this podcast or if you care about health performance fitness you may really enjoy getting a whoop. That's right. You can check out whoop at woup.com. It measures everything around sleep, recovery, strain, and you can now sign up for free for 30 days. So you'll literally get the high performance wearable in the mail for free. You get to try it for 30 days, see whether you want to be a member. And that is just at woup.com. Back to the guests. The strain data the day before a game it looks like you'll go as low as you know sub 10 even you know 10 to 12 that's what

I'm seeing for the playoff games Patrick's data and then the games are super intense like oh almost always over a 20 it looks like for the playoff games maybe some regular season games 18 or 19 but yeah and I think that that in the playoffs at this point in his career he he has he and his coaching staff have decided, hey, this is when we're going to put ourselves at more physical risk. Not irresponsibly, but, you know, Patrick is going to run if he needs to. He's going to fight for a first down if he needs to. Instead of looking at down the field and saying, okay, here's a linebacker in a safety, I'm just, I think I can make this throw. He's going to run it if he doesn't sure. And that's playoff football. That's not just Patrick. That's any

quarterback at this point. And knowing that we have four games, the risk are lower from the standpoint of how many hits he's going to take in these four games. His body is prepared as anyone is to be able to handle that workload. And as he's shown in the playoffs before, you know, he is a difficult person to these guys attack. He's got a running back body. And, you know, he can take contact as good as any runner in the game. Looking at preparation for the Ravens game looks like 48% restorative sleep the day of, you know, 76% recovery, high, high sleep efficiency, 86% like feels like all of those are kind of right where you want them. You tell me. Yeah, this year his sleep efficiency was really good for a lot of the year. But his sleep

duration was down. And, you know, I think. Yeah, I mean, I think when you have, when you have another kid and things are changing with your family. You know, I think that's expected. I think it's pretty normal. You've got a baby. You've got another baby. You got out of that baby stage last year and then now you got another one. And that's a blessing, right? But I think that what's been cool to see is that his body has responded by being more efficient in his sleep. But he is getting less sleep. Now, there are days that he's intentional and it can. And nobody really knows this about last week, but he was sick all week last week and then and then come game time uh the day before the game it kind of cleared up and so and that wasn't going to be an excuse or something that's talked about a lot but it's the reality

when you look at the data you can kind of see that he just wasn't right all week he's he didn't get a lot of sleep but like he did the week before was better and the week before that was better last week was a bit of an anomaly and uh sleep duration and his recovery scores compared it to our two weeks prior and it was because he was fighting he was fighting something he didn't feel good when he got back from Buffalo and we still did our work and he didn't feel good even on Friday and he really came out of it Saturday and Sunday he felt great and he's been good since but it was a challenging week preparing for the Ravens and that's that's an understatement you know I've spent a lot of time in New England now with we're being here in Boston

and having gone to school here and and so I've watched watch so many of the Patriots playoff games. I'm sure you did too and other football fans have as well. But there's a lot, there's a lot of similarities between what it feels like the Chiefs and Patrick are now doing to what I saw with the Patriots where it just kind of didn't matter as much like quote unquote who was the better team. It was all about the performance in the moment and just finding ways to win. You know, that Ravens game felt. very different than the bill's game in a way felt a little different than the dolphins game but each one it was like it just felt like the chiefs were going to win when you started watching it

and you just felt like they were going to find a way to win are you starting to feel that too do you see those similarities absolutely i think you know tom was he's undisputed as the the greatest player of all time right now and you know i don't think we're in any position for that to change in any time soon and yeah that's always the feeling i had watching tom is like they're not out of this game and if he's if he's upright they can win it and i think a lot of that Patrick has that you know he has that ability and it's it's a belief and it's a belief down to his core there's there's not a way for you to manifest that if it's not if it's not something that doesn't resound within you he he is that i mean he believes that they're going to win at no point any

game that I've ever seen him play as a cheat, do I think that he ever expects that they are going to lose or concedes that? And I think that's an incredible quality, you know, and it's leadership and it's a reflection on, you know, the effect that Andy's had on him and his confidence in his teammates. And this year has been, you know, it's been a challenge for a lot of reasons that are unique to his career to this point. And I've, I've, I've, I've, have he gained even more respect for him as a leader in the way that he's handled? You know, you can call it adversity, but, you know, they just, they've just had trouble. They've had trouble in offense and, you know, funny ways and ways that are not typical.

And they've had some bad luck. And they've also had some players that would be the first to tell you they've underperformed, including himself at times. And to maintain that belief, I think it speaks to what you're talking about in that he never never once thought they wouldn't be in this game he never once thought that they wouldn't figure it out he he never once believed that his receivers weren't going to perform the way he knew that they could and that Travis couldn't be Travis and sure enough you know we see Travis maybe have the best game in his career and Patrick in the playoffs it has been as good as he's ever been in any game in his career so yeah I mean there's never a time that

watching that I think that we're going to lose that game because I've got that belief in him that I know that he's got in himself. Yeah, it's, it is kind of that, it's just amazing. It also seems to have happened very young for him. Like it feels like it happens for other athletes a little bit more in like the back quarter of their careers or it's just they've been around the block enough. They've been in these big moments enough where there's a certain sense of no, or a certain power or command that they have over the situation.

But it just feels like he's there really young and really soon in his career. So it's super exciting. I mean, it's going to be exciting to see where it all goes from here. But it's just worth saying that it's, it's really unique. Well, it's one of those things where you look at even some of the data I saw that Tim Grover put out, Jordan Peterson put out about lobsters. I don't know if you've seen, you know, some of the things. that Jordan Peterson said about lobsters, but basically, if a lobster wins when they're young,

they never stop winning fights ever. And if a lobster loses a fight when it's young, like the first one, they never win. And it's this unbelievable belief system that actually creates these physical adaptations to where they become these kingpins just from, just from that winning. And I think with any dominant athlete that we've seen in the last 50 years, you can see that that belief grows it's not something that goes away and it in not only that that that gets stronger and i think you saw that with tom brady you saw it with michael jordan and i think we're seeing that with patrick and then that belief rubs off on everyone and he's he's just been phenomenal at at that but but then you look at the data of he's played 20 more games than i think the second

closest quarterback since 2017. And that's from all the playoff games that he's been in. And that experience, those moments that adds up, and you get to these special places where you're winning these games and it's not blowouts. I mean, everything's close. I think the amount of close games that the Chiefs have had this year have been the greatest advantage that they've had in these playoffs

because they're incredibly comfortable in these difficult situations and they have a belief that they're going to figure it out this time and they've done it looking at uh the 49ers this coming weekend what's your assessment of the opposing team phenomenal team phenomenal roster uh i know a lot of the people in the management and in their sports medicine department and they're they're great they're incredible uh they've done phenomenal job. They deserve to be there. There's a reason that they're favored to win this game. I love Brock Purdy. Kirsman Caffrey is one of my favorite players of all time. George Kittles, you know, he's, you know, what do you say? He's great. I love his personality. I love

his game. You know, in this defense is star-studded. You look at the amount of first-round draft picks they've got on this team. It's, you know, some of the most in history. They've been favored in every single game in the year. every single one, including this one. It's crazy. They're the exact opposite of an underdog. And I think we've got a great, great challenge, and this is going to be a good opportunity to see what our best looks like.

And if we don't play our best, you know, they're going to win. So it's a good matchup. There are some interesting individual matchups. I think Brock Purdy is wildly underrated. I think he's got some, he reminds me of a young. young Russell Wilson and that I get so tired of people saying that he's sneaky athletic. He can run. This guy is a very good running quarterback. He's very efficient in the spread. He's got he's brilliant. He's got a high IQ. He's got a quick release. He anticipates his throws a lot.

And I think he's, you know, we've got a lot of other concerns. They've got four receivers that probably could be ones or twos in any team that they've, played on in devo is one of the most unique you know players that's ever played in the NFL and can certainly take over a game so uh spent a lot of time watching you know their film and you know one of the things i like to do is try to give patrick physical matchups as far as knowing knowing who he's facing and how how they how they approach you know open field tackles how they approach it, you know, rushing the pastor and giving him profiles on, you know, how he physically matches up with guys in open field. And they're tough. Well, without, without getting into specifics

on, on the matchup against the 49ers, like, what would be the type of feedback you'd give in that category around tackling, for example? That's an interesting concept. Yeah, let's go back a few weeks and we don't even have to name the team, but one of the things that I do is, look, I'm not as football coach I don't want to you know they they know what they're doing and that's a whole different thing but for me what I like to look at is how guys move in space and so what Patrick and I can talk about oftentimes is okay this linebacker runs really well side to side but if you if you get a chance to go right at him you're going to be able to be him or you can outrun this guy in a foot race to the corner but do not let him pursue you from this angle or um this guy's big on you know

as far as contact, he goes low. You know, giving him, you know, watching the film and just saying, this guy goes low, he goes lower, or this guy likes to tackle him this way. And then from a pass rusher standpoint, I look at guys as speed rushers and power rushers. And if a guy is, you know, tries to use strength as his primary tool for a pass rush, then we love to be able to have an escape plan going away from that athlete.

Because we don't believe that they could pursue us in an opposite direction. that they don't have the speed to pursue us in opposite direction or up the middle. Now, if you're playing against a Micah Parsons or someone like that, then you don't want to run away from him because he can come from behind and make a play on him. So what you do with someone like that that has a high speed profile, and we know Patrick is not someone that's going to outrun him in space, is you run right out. And the reason you do that is because you want past that athlete,

you want to pass that athlete and that's done. So that's your greatest opportunity is to go right at them if you have, a situation where you need to escape the pocket, if that makes any sense. It does. It's just an interesting perspective that is sort of obvious now that you hear it, but it's not something I thought that much about, which is, you know, if you have a stronger player, you want to get into a foot race. If you have a faster player, you might want to go at them and see if you can beat them right there. Yeah, I mean, I think in these situations, it's just things you want in the back of your mind because in your subconscious, you're going to

just act. It's going to be deep subconscious, emotional pretences. And so if we talk about these things during the week, he's got a million things to think about, game plan-wise, play-wise, progressions. But if in the back of his head is like, okay, 95, he can't run with me. I'm going to be here. Or Parsons is here. I'm either running up the middle away from him. You know, I'm not going to run to the left if he's on the right because he can chase me down and strip the ball. These are things that you can't just think about, but you, you, you, If you know these things, you've got a chance that your body's going to protect you. And then different things like safeties that play the ball and they're not very physical in the open field or corners that don't want to tackle.

You know, things that are, you've got different defensive linemen have different attributes just like quarterbacks. And so just knowing what their tendencies are. You know, these guys get on level. You can break the pocket here. Or maybe the linebackers that we see, hey, they turn their head really quick on past plays. If they do, he can run it up the middle right behind them. These are things that they're part of my job to notice to help to help him have just an idea. But I in no means telling him how to how to act on these things or anything like that.

Yeah, for sure. Well, it's, I mean, look, it's amazing that you're back at the Super Bowl and Patrick's back at the Super Bowl. And we're so happy for both of you. It's, I mean, at face value, right? Like, if you just told me, hey, Mahomes is going to his fourth Super Bowl in five years, and he's up against a quarterback who is the last overall draft pick. And by the way, he's not favored in the game. You'd kind of be like, whoa, I don't know.

I think the line's a little disrespectful. That's my take. I like being an underdog, and I think. Oh, I think it's a great place to be, by the way. I think it's a great place to be. But I think it's a little disrespectful. It's a plus two and a half in some places. Well, I can promise you this.

I'm going to make sure that they think it's disrespectful, too, because that's helpful. But I think that, you know, Tom Brady was picked late. And, again, Hurdy can play. And these guys, there's a reason that they're favored. But, yeah, I mean, the media makes it really easy for me. Patrick is motivated by disrespect like anybody else at a high level. And these things are just, they're really good motivation for a guy like him. Any predictions you want to give us for the game?

I think it's going to be a close game. I think the coaching staffs on both sides are elite. I think that the players are great. They're going to prepare. And I think you're going to see Patrick play his best Super Bowl yet. I really believe that. Awesome. He's the healthiest he's been.

he's got a great understanding of this game and he's been there and I just I believe in the way that he's playing right now I just feel like there's no drop off you know the thing is we can't control how good the 49ers play I fully expect them to play their best game in the year and so that and by by no means is that a prediction that we're going to win this game but I do feel like that Patrick's going to come out and play you know one of the one of the best games and I would say I think he's going to go out. there and play his best Super Bowl. That's the goal. That's all he can control. Everything else is up to chance, but that's our job. That's what we want to do. Well, I heard Tom Brady wants to talk about the Super Bowl as being a really unique game in itself because of all the hype around it and all the sort of delayed lead-up.

And then the fact that the halftime is so long so that it actually makes each half almost feels like its own game. And again, I feel like there's such an advantage. for this team having been to these Super Bowls over time and, like, you know, leaders like Patrick and Kelsey and others having been to the Super Bowl because I feel like it's its own thing. Anyway, I'm excited for all of you. It's definitely different.

It's a long half time. They're used to 10 minutes of sitting down or listening to something and right back out. But, you know, the advantage of them having their fourth Super Bowl is that he's got a routine now And he knows what he didn't like and what he does like. And I feel like that that's a huge advantage. And these guys have done, the chiefs have been great in third quarters of the Super Bowl. And I think that's a reflection of their staff and, you know, the things that they're able to do during that time and being resourceful.

And I fully expect that to continue. Well, Bobby, this has been a lot of fun. Thank you for coming back on. Obviously, I'm rooting red this weekend. And hopefully it's a green recovery on Sunday and a red recovery. on Monday, right? That's what we're open for. If we do win, there's not going to be any sleep.

That's for sure. All right, man. This has been a pleasure, and thanks for coming on the podcast. Hey, I appreciate it. Thank you. Big thank you to Bobby for taking the time to go over all things, training and recovery. Once again, wishing Pat the best of luck on Sunday.

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