Patrick Mahomes hopes Netflix gave you a peek of his life. We learned something else

Patrick Mahomes rolled into Chiefs training camp Tuesday with a pair of suitcases in each hand, when an assistant coach wondered aloud why his luggage did not include any golf clubs.

“No clubs,” Mahomes replied. “I’m not playing golf for a while.”

The remark was quick but purposeful, and six days ago, we learned just how purposeful. In Netflix’s “Quarterback,” the most private look yet into Mahomes’ life during a football season, he had hoped to share the behind-the-scenes dedication required of all NFL quarterbacks.

But we got something a bit different: why his off-the-field work has given him an edge on it. In the same way the best quarterbacks in the world are far from a dime a dozen inside the stadium, they are far from cookie cutter in their preparation, in their personality, in their mentality. There are edges to be gained everywhere, even in the small details, same as there are advantages in arm strength, accuracy and reading defenses.

And Mahomes seems to have found more than a few.

By the completion of the eight episodes, you are left with more than the knowledge of the commitment required to play the position. We know why one guy’s resume might include two Super Bowls and their accompanying MVP honors, two more regular season MVP awards and five consecutive appearances in the AFC Championship Game and why another might have one career playoff win and why another might have lost the starting job.

It’s talent, first and foremost.

But a little more than that too.

And it’s that last phrase — that little extra — that smacks you in the face over and over again in “Quarterback.” Because the little extra for Patrick Mahomes is not the same as the little extra for Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins. (And with Marcus Mariota, it’s apparently very little extra; his behind-the-scenes work drops in like brief cameos.)

Much as the show’s script has these guys rattle off some play names to demonstrate the similar mental capacity required to play the position, their mentalities are considerably more contrasting than similar. As Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell attempts to subtly supply his quarterback with confidence — crediting him for their 6-1 record in front of the entire team — Mahomes is expending energy trying to instill confidence in teammates. O’Connell has acutely recognized the doubt that surrounds Cousins — heck, the show opens with it — and keenly replaces it with positive reinforcement.

Plain as day, Mahomes’ motivation derives from negativity. He feeds off the doubt. Those around him make sure he hears of it.

You can’t help but wonder how much that comes into play. At one point, the most interesting line of the show, Mahomes says, “I think we match up better versus the Bills, but I want to play the Bengals. ... I’m tired of them talking.”

You see the difference.

And you see the basis for it. The grind.

How did a serious postseason ankle injury became more like a pop-up shower than a full-blown thunderstorm? There might not be outright injury prevention, but it sure as heck looks as though Mahomes runs through the gamut of methods of injury reduction.

He is quite clearly blessed with many of the physical tools, but he perhaps just as quite clearly separates himself during the season. Like, on the so-called off days. And there are literal off-days for Cousins, one per week, which even he acknowledges is unusual in his profession.

As Cousins describes the difficulty in opening doors after playing NFL games — you know, quite understandable after absorbing hits from 300-pound linemen — Mahomes is cycling through full workouts with his personal trainer, Bobby Stroupe. It’s the first workout of the week (“A” day) not the last two (“B” day or “C” day), that is designed to return his body to normalcy.

Maybe that will change with age. He’s 27. Cousins is 34. We can’t pretend that doesn’t matter. But maybe the chicken arrives before the egg too.

There is a sophistication to Mahomes’ workouts — so precise that it would be inadequate to mention just one example. But let’s offer one anyway.

In the show’s second episode, Stroupe describes how they work to improve the mobility of Mahomes’ neck.

Yes, his neck.

“Patrick can keep his head perfectly still, like an owl, and still be able to visually see what’s going on here,” Stroupe says, while pointing almost straight sideways, “and also manipulate his body due to the mobility that he has in his spine.”

As the camera pans to a Mahomes workout involving rotational movements, Stroupe adds, “We train to be able to move in as many ways as possible.”

This isn’t a point about effort or a willingness to put in the work, because at this level it’s not strictly about who does the work; it’s about who does the right work. Ask Tom Brady about that.

Here, it’s almost in succession that we watch Stroupe precisely measure just about every movement in Mahomes’ body during a workout — from the speed of his left-handed swing to the power he puts behind a medicine-ball toss into a brick wall — before watching two doctors ask Cousins to pretend he’s throwing a deep ball in their living room.

Mahomes forces his body into the uncomfortable, working too on “tissue resilience,” as Stroupe calls it, to prepare his body for what it might face on Sundays, expected or otherwise.

In the example of one player, the vagueness prompted me to ask: How is this directly benefiting the performance? In the example of another, it’s quite obvious.

Such as this: Mahomes works to strengthen the wrist in a variety of ways. To refresh your memory on how that directly applies to a football game, trace back to the Chiefs’ win against Seattle on Christmas Eve a year ago. Late in the fourth quarter, Mahomes scrambled toward the sideline and planted his left hand into the grass on a dive. He not only refrained from injuring his wrist but instead used it to propel his 225-pound frame a few extra yards to score.

An edge on the scoreboard derived from an edge in the work.

An edge during an “off” day. An edge during game day.

We’ve long known the latter. We got a better glimpse of the former.