Patrick Mahomes, Jimmy Garoppolo both in 'great situations,' says Chiefs QB

AVENTURA, Fla. -- To Patrick Mahomes, the similarities between himself and Jimmy Garoppolo don't end with the fact that each player will quarterback a team in Super Bowl LIV on Sunday. They extend to the idea that they were put in the right position to take advantage of their skills.

"Being in the right organization with the right coaches, the right teammates ... being in this league, it's not about one person," said Mahomes, who will lead the Kansas City Chiefsagainst Garoppolo and the San Francisco 49ers. "It's not about the quarterback. It's about your team and how you go out there and play as a team and play together.

"So I think with both me and him, we've been put in a lot of great situations and we've tried to maximize that every day we get those opportunities. ... I think Jimmy would say the same thing."

Mahomes and Garoppolo arrived on their current teams in 2017, and they were matched with innovative offensive head coaches.

Garoppolo joined the 49ers in a midseason trade with the New England Patriots and flourished almost immediately under Kyle Shanahan. Mahomes joined the Chiefs and coach Andy Reid as their first-round draft pick, and he didn't play much as a rookie. By the time he became a starter in 2018, the Chiefs had the pieces of a championship offense in place around him.

"I think I ended up in the perfect place," Mahomes said. "To have Coach Reid and these coaches around me, to have Alex Smith in front of me for a year and be able to learn from him and then obviously to have all the players I have around me, I'm in a place where the team was already a winning team. They had a lot of success and when I came in, I was able to just be who I am, and ended up winning a lot of football games early in my career.

"I hope I get to play the rest of my career there now. I mean, just the people and how they accept you and how they care about you more as a person than they do as a player and how much passion they have for the Kansas City Chiefs, it's special and it's somewhere I want to be for the rest of my career."