A new season will constantly challenge the best coaches, players and teams to be better than the last. The same can be said about the most accomplished athletes, as in the case of Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes.

Mahomes is fresh from another Pro Bowl season in 2021, looking to do more to erase a poor second half in the AFC Championship game. He enters the 2022 season feeling healthier than he was during last year’s training camp due to recovery from a 2020 foot injury that limited him.

Mahomes spoke to reporters Friday afternoon about feeling healthy and the improvement it will have in his performance this season.

“It really helped a lot this offseason just not having to go back and rehab for those first two months,” Mahomes said. “I was working out, but I couldn’t do much. So I had to just rehab basically throughout the entire workout. And this year, just starting from right through the season, just going right back to working out again and being there and build on stuff that I could work on, some of the weaknesses and stuff that I had. And I think it actually helped, the rehab I did with my legs — I think I have a better base underneath me. So just trying to make sure that I keep getting better. I want to make sure that I can do whatever I can to put the team in the best position and make us the best team we could possibly be.”

Mahomes was criticized early last season for too many turnovers compared to previous seasons. Many spectators wondered if there was something mechanically different, and Mahomes may have just confirmed that to be true.

“I think with having the foot issues at the end of [the 2020 season], I kind of got some bad habits of falling off that foot, not planting it in the right spot and making the right throw,” Mahomes said. “That’ll affect your accuracy. And so I think as the season went on, coach Reid really harped that on me. And I got better and better as the season went. But to be able to work on that for a full offseason and then coming into training camp, I’m in a way better spot than I was going in training camp last year, and I will try to keep building on that.”

The importance of a healthy Mahomes will always be essential to the Chiefs’ success this season. He seems to be confident that the lingering pain he’s played through in the past won’t be a problem moving forward.