There's no sweeter time for new additions to the NFL than during rookie minicamps.
Every team is excited to have them. Reviews are glowing. The acclimation process is friendly and measured.
But as the fresh crop of quarterbacks receive their first playbooks -- imagine the yellow pages back when landlines and answering machines were still hot -- the sheer amount of information can be initially overwhelming. New Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes wasn't shy about the increased difficulty in his first 72 hours of marriage with Kansas City's offense.
"It's a lot more than I had at Texas Tech," Mahomes said, via ESPN. "Whenever I got up there and called it, then I had to look out there and see the guys and make sure everybody was in the right position. That was pretty much the process, and it was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be."
This is quite common, but also interesting in the continuous comparison of college and professional offensive systems, their complexities and their substantial difference in snaps taken under center. Mahomes is one of the luckier rookie signal-callers, selected by a team with an entrenched starter. With no clock or calendar held against him, he'll have plenty of time to learn the ins and outs of the offense under Alex Smith and head coach Andy Reid, who's displayed a propensity for developing reliable passers in the past.
"You try to find a balance to where you're still challenging him but he can still function," Reid said. "Everything won't be pretty today, but he'll do all right. He'll get an idea of what it's all about.
"The main thing is that he learns the verbiage part. We know he can throw the football. It's a matter of getting in and getting the verbiage down and the formations and making sure he's comfortable with that. It's a good period for him to learn. There will be a lot of that going on."
With Smith seemingly going nowhere in the short term (barring injury, of course), Mahomes should have no problem knowing the offense by the time his opportunity comes around.
