Patrick Mahomes doesn’t appear to be a fan of Kermit the Frog — at least when he’s being dressed up as the quarterback.
Mahomes, 28, broke his silence on Friday, July 26, over the Las Vegas Raiders mocking his voice, which some have compared to the Muppet, by playing with a Kermit doll wearing his Kansas City Chiefs jersey.
“It’s still early in the year. Stuff like that happens,” Mahomes told reporters when asked about the Raiders’ joke. “It’ll get handled when it gets handled.”
The NFL athlete, who has won three Super Bowl Championships, brushed off the incident, explaining that not many people sent the video to him. “Everybody kinda just lets me play. They know how I am,” Mahomes said. “They don’t need to send me anything to keep me motivated.”
On Thursday, July 25, the Raiders made headlines when a video surfaced from their training camp. In the clip, rookie safety Trey Taylor put a Kermit puppet on his hand and said, “I’m a bitch,” while pretending to be Mahomes. His teammates can be heard laughing in the background.
The doll, which was brought by a fan, was wearing Mahomes’ Chiefs jersey and had a wig to resemble his curly hair.
“The Raiders have a Patrick Mahomes Kermit the Frog puppet at training camp?” former NFL player Robert Griffin III tweeted after seeing the video. “The man is 10-2 against the Raiders, Chiefs have won 8 straight AFC West titles and they just guaranteed themselves an ass whooping they won’t forget.”
Under Mahomes’ leadership, the Chiefs have won 10 of their last 12 games against the Raiders, dating back to 2018. Kansas City has earned 30 touchdowns when playing the Las Vegas team with Mahomes throwing for 3,573 yards in those games.
The Raiders, however, did beat the Chiefs in their latest matchup which was on Christmas Day in 2023. The teams are set to face off again during week 8 of the 2024 NFL season.
Like his quarterback, Chiefs head coach Andy Reid downplayed the Kermit joke during a chat with CBS Sports on Friday from their own training camp session.
“I’d probably say, we don’t spend a lot of time here with puppets,” he explained. “We try to do our work and try and get better. That’s the important thing.”
Raiders’ head coach, Antonio Pierce, also commented on the drama saying, “We addressed it as a team yesterday and we nipped it in the bud.” According to NFL.com, he insisted, “It’s over with.”