It’s so predictable. If a young athlete rises into the rarefied air of athletic greatness, he’d better prove that he’s “woke.” Otherwise the Twitter Cancel Culture will scour through his old tweets in order to shame him and eventually “cancel” him. Or her, although in this case I’m talking about a male. Who also identifies as male.

Such is the sentence passed on Patrick Mahomes, the wünderkind quarterback for the Super Bowl-bound Kansas City Chiefs. Mahomes is an athletic freak of nature in a game populated by elite athletes. At only 24 years old, he’s the reigning MVP of the National Football League, and is already being compared to Tom Brady, whom some sports writers claim to be the greatest NFL player ever.

How many other quarterbacks can successfully complete a no-look pass? Or a left-handed throw to a waiting receiver?

No look pass. Credit: tenor.com.

But Mahomes also has a reputation in Kansas City for being the “good kid,” the Christian who prays before every game and says that his faith drives his success. However, he hasn’t made any comments that indicate that he sides with the woke crowd. So prior to last Sunday’s conference matchup with the Tennessee Titans — the game that would determine which AFC team would go to the Super Bowl — Twitter snoops found some old tweets about the 2012 Trayvon Martin shooting in which the QB wasn’t sufficiently on Team Trayvon for some. Instead, they insisted that Mahomes sided with George Zimmerman when Zimmerman shot Martin and claimed self-defense. A jury later acquitted Zimmerman of all charges.

One fuming Twitter user posted this:

“@PatrickMahomes is a clown if he believes George Zimmerman is not guilty!! I don’t give a fu** about his athletic abilities 5 td’s or 10. Anyone that supports racism or ignorant bigotry is a bit** no matter what!! 

In a 2013 Twitter exchange with a fellow football teammate, the then-17-year-old Mahomes didn’t give a full-throated defense of Trayvon Martin. However, another Twitter user pointed out that in his tweets (now deleted), Mahomes criticized Zimmerman for following Martin with a gun when police told him to stand down.

Clearly, he seemed to be using his head instead of his emotions to ponder the case. Since then, Mahomes has never publicly spoken about the trial or shooting.

But wait! There’s more! There’s always more dirt for Cancel Culture to discover. And discover they did: they found an earlier tweet from 2011 when Patrick Mahomes — then only 16 — had the audacity to tweet this:

“stop resisting or assaulting a cop #realcops”

This led NewsOne, a website which targets black audiences, to accuse Mahomes of — gasp! — favoring police:

“The athlete seems to have a history of favoring cops and the law.” 

Well, yes, yes he does. Last May, Mahomes consorted with the alleged enemy: he visited the Kansas City Regional Police Academy. While there, he got to don a bullet-proof vest, hoist a sniper rifle, drive a police cruiser, and even control the bomb squad’s robot. What’s more, he gave props to the police:

“The things the police do for our community on a day-to-day basis and don’t get recognized for it. It’s good to come out and support them because they support us in every single way.”

Not only that, but on Veterans Day, Mahomes took part in the Chiefs’ support for a military veteran who helps other veterans suffering from PTSD. He wrote the vet a letter, recognizing that without our vets, there would be no football, no Game Day:

That sort of appreciation for police and the military just infuriated black Cancel Culture even more:

“Black twitter do ya thing. Cancel Patrick Mahomes.” 

Oh please. What does “cancel Patrick Mahomes” look like in their narrow little Twitterverse? Do they think they’ll ruin his phenomenal NFL career? Will the Hunt family, which owns the Chiefs, decide to drop him because he angered the Twitter mob? Will Chiefs fans stop filling Arrowhead Stadium? Or maybe Mahomes’ feelings will be so hurt that he’ll leave Kansas City for good, never to return, compelled to a life of coaching small town football teams.

Only in the fevered dreams of Cancel Culture will any of that happen.

The fact is this: Patrick Mahomes is no Colin Kaepernick. He appreciates the police and our military veterans. He doesn’t kneel during the National Anthem. And, unlike Kaepernick, he actually plays professional football for a team, and that team is competing in the Super Bowl on February 2.

Featured image: Thomson20219/flickr/photoshop enhancement by Brand X Studio/public domain.