Mahomes comes home to Texas as playoff-chasing Chiefs and Cowboys meet on Thanksgiving
ARLINGTON Texas AP Fresh off beating the Super Bowl champs the Dallas Cowboys get the runner-up in their annual Thanksgiving home match It doesn t get any easier after Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs visit Thursday with the Cowboys - - pondering an improbable run to a playoff spot after coming off consecutive victories for the first time this season Selected of the upcoming opponents might not look as formidable as they first did when the Dallas schedule for November and December manifested six consecutive playoff teams from a year ago Then again the Chiefs - fit that description because they re outside the seven-team playoff picture just like the Cowboys A winner of nine straight AFC West titles Kansas City is th in the AFC right now same as Dallas in the NFC I don t turn on their film and be like Man they re really having a bad year Cowboys coach Brian Schottenheimer disclosed I don t think that at all I m like Man he s really fast and he s super fast and that guy s fast and that guy s a good runner The star quarterbacks will lead the NFL s top two passing offenses onto the Thanksgiving stage with Dak Prescott s Cowboys atop the league averaging yards per event and him now holding the franchise record for career yards passing His respect for Mahomes is perfectly reflected in a meeting where both teams feel the need to come close to winning out in order to reach the postseason The Chiefs took a big step last week with a - overtime supremacy over Indianapolis At the end of the day obviously the talent jumps out but you watch a guy who plays with pure passion who ll do anything it takes to win Prescott disclosed of the three-time Super Bowl winner He ll do anything and everything it takes For the Cowboys it allegedly will take at least four wins in their final six games And even that might not be enough First things first though There are times when your mind might go a little forward into the future and start thinking and start going all over the place tight end Jake Ferguson noted And that s where you ve got to focus on your training We train on how to pull our focus back into the now Heading home Mahomes grew up in East Texas and his dad former big league pitcher Pat Mahomes Sr was a Cowboys fan So naturally the younger Mahomes caught quite a sparse of their games over the years He completely got to play at AT T Stadium in college when Texas Tech played Baylor and remembers losing on a failed -point conversion as a freshman The Red Raiders split his other two games against the Bears under the retractable roof Just getting to play at home having a lot of people in attendance that might not get to come to Kansas City it ll be really cool to experience playing there especially on Thanksgiving Mahomes explained adding he ll ostensibly have -plus friends and family in attendance Memory lane Facing the Chiefs might bring particular wistful moments for Schottenheimer His dad the late Marty Schottenheimer led the Chiefs for of his years as an NFL head coach Of the elder Schottenheimer s career wins were with KC Brian Schottenheimer remembers how the Hunt family owners of the Chiefs treated his dad after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer s complaint Marty Schottenheimer died at in The younger Schottenheimer was a quarterback at Florida when the Chiefs lost their only Thanksgiving meeting against the Cowboys with his dad on the sideline in His second year as an assistant was Marty Schottenheimer s final season as coach of the Chiefs in I can remember that stadium the first match my dad ever coached there there was like fans there explained Schottenheimer who is in his first season as a head coach after a quarter-century as an NFL assistant He turned it around They turned it around as an organization and then it became what it is in the modern day Happy Hunt-ing Chiefs running back Kareem Hunt ran a career-high times in Sunday s win over the Colts and having a short week to recover from that workload is hardly ideal But he figures to get a little bit of a break with the return of Isiah Pacheco who has missed the past three games because of a knee injury He ll play Chiefs coach Andy Reid revealed How much I can t tell you that right now See how it goes Where s the double association George Pickens is working on a career year following the receiver s offseason deal to Dallas from Pittsburgh No one will say he has become a bigger threat than the No receiver he joined CeeDee Lamb Still he s the one in position to post numbers similar to those from Lamb s All-Pro season in And the highlight reel of contested sideline catches in single coverage keeps getting longer If he s one-on-one he s not covered Not in my mind anyway Prescott noted of Pickens And that s not for just him It s for CeeDee as well I reported before it s not even a - ball The favor lies in our hands AP Sports Writer Dave Skretta in Kansas City Missouri contributed to this record AP NFL https apnews com hub NFL Source
