KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Patrick Mahomes’ social calendar was full during May in town. He was spotted at a Jason Aldean concert, threw out the first pitch at a Royals game and wore jorts and a sleeveless baseball jersey to a NASCAR race.

It’s not that Mahomes didn’t indulge in some Kansas City events last year, when he was a Chiefs rookie and the backup quarterback to Alex Smith. But seemingly every one of his outings is now celebrated on social media, and there’s little doubt that he’s taking over the town as he becomes the starter.

Mahomes tried last season to blend in with the surroundings. He walked precisely the delicate balance between being the first signal-caller picked in the first round by the Chiefs in 34 years and being the supportive No. 2 quarterback. Much has been made of how Smith was the perfect mentor for Mahomes, but it’s just as true that having Mahomes capably deflect attention away from himself benefited Smith in his final season in Kansas City.

Now the starter, Mahomes is still liberal with the compliments for his teammates and his new hometown. But he’s no longer deferential. The trade of Smith to Washington was hardly completed when Mahomes began bugging his teammates for throwing sessions, long before offseason practice started.

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“He just took control out there on the first day,” tight end Travis Kelce said. “That’s the biggest thing is seeing that he does have control of the room at such a young age, knowing this is his first rodeo in the NFL. He’s not shy about taking the lead and that’s huge. It makes it easier on all of us to see the direction of where this can go and it’s easy to follow that.

“It’s exciting and it’s something I think we’re going to have to do together knowing Pat’s situation, him coming into a role with a lot of scrutiny at the quarterback position. It’s definitely going to be a team effort to try to get him rolling.”

Mahomes didn’t come to Kansas City with much experience at being the backup. He was a reserve for part of his true freshman year at Texas Tech, but he moved into the starting lineup before that season was finished and stayed there for his final two seasons with the Red Raiders.

Still, he knew enough to largely stay in his cocoon as a rookie, to be seen but seldom heard.

“That’s the same for every rookie,” Mahomes said. “Every rookie, you come in and you just try to work hard and kind of keep your head down, I guess you would say, and just try to prove to the team that you’re trying to do whatever is best for the team.

“As you gain some of that respect, as you go further in your career, you start talking more and people can really respect what you’re saying because they know you’re in the best interest of your team.”

Mahomes’ background helped him in this regard. He has been around pro sports most of his life. His father, Pat, pitched for 11 seasons with six teams in Major League Baseball.

“He grew up in that environment and understood sort of intrinsically a whole lot of what passes for etiquette in team sports,” said Mahomes’ agent, Leigh Steinberg.

Steinberg is a longtime agent who has represented many of the NFL’s top quarterbacks. He said that keeping a low profile as a rookie was part of the plan for Mahomes.

“I talked through with him the process of maturation and process of integration that many of our quarterbacks have went through, whether it was Troy Aikman or Steve Young or Warren Moon,” Steinberg said. “We talked about how the first year the goal was to integrate into the team, and the only way to do that is to pay deference to the incumbent veterans and try not to go into the situation with a high profile.

“We intentionally didn’t do endorsements that would run in the Kansas City area even though they were offered. We didn’t want him to be on billboards and everything when he wasn’t even playing.”

The plan will change now that Mahomes is the starter.

He needs to take command of the locker room, one that already features established voices like those of Kelce and safety Eric Berry. That can be tricky for a young player, but Mahomes didn’t seem daunted by the task.

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The wider field won’t impede Johnny Manziel in the Canadian Football League. Neither will the 20-second play clock, the 12-man defensive looks, the punts on third down nor the pre-snap motion. It’s all of it, all at once, all while Manziel is in a hurry to master this league so he can move on to the next.

Most American quarterbacks need a year or more to adjust and thrive in the CFL. But if Manziel is to return to the NFL when his two-year contract expires, he must speed up the traditional timetable and put extended periods of high-end play on tape right away. He can start measuring his progress Friday night when he debuts in the Hamilton Tiger-Cats’ preseason opener, scheduled to kick off on ESPN+ at 7:30 p.m. ET.

“Some guys come up here and they can have success right away,” said Edmonton Eskimos quarterback Mike Reilly, the CFL’s Most Outstanding Player in 2017. “But it takes some time to really understand what’s happening. It’s hard. It’s hard to be successful here right out of the gates. That’s definitely going to be a challenge.”

To be fair, most quarterbacks who migrate north don’t have Manziel’s athletic skills and pedigree. Reilly, for example, went undrafted in 2009 out of Central Washington. He was released by four NFL teams over 18 months before moving to the CFL, and only after spending two seasons on the bench did he get a chance to start in 2013.

Current Tiger-Cats starter Jeremiah Masoli spent three seasons on the bench after signing in 2013 out of Mississippi. Hamilton coach June Jones has said he is committed to Masoli as the starter, but some of Jones’ other public comments — such as when he said last winter that Manziel would be the “best player to ever play up here” — suggest he is eager to get Manziel on the field.

“I think Johnny will come fast because we’re not going to change things from here on,” Jones said this week. “He has the whole offense in, and he’s been running it on the field. Now, does he know what he’s doing with it yet? No. But because we’re repping it all with him now, he’s going to come faster than what is typical.”

Manziel has acknowledged the steep learning curve but told reporters this week that he has “a pretty good grasp on almost everything that we’re doing.” He said he has played Jones’ run ‘n’ shoot scheme “a million” times on EA Sports’ “NCAA Football,” and Jones said his approach in many ways mirrors the three- and four-receiver sets Manziel utilized at Texas A&M.

“I looked at every pass he threw in the NFL out of a four-wide, a three-wide, out of an empty set,” Jones said, “and he threw the ball just like he did in college out of those. What the NFL did to him is put him in something he had never been in before. Never in high school, never in college, he had never run what he was asked to do. But when he was asked to do the things he had done, which is what he’ll be asked to do here, he looked like an All-Pro.”

Indeed, 97 percent of Manziel’s throws in college came out of sets with at least three receivers on the field, according to ESPN Stats & Information research. That number dropped to 70 percent over two seasons with the Cleveland Browns.

But Jones’ enthusiasm for his scheme, and Manziel’s fit in it, glosses over the more fundamental challenges of this transition. People I spoke with this week reinforced what others said during a trip to Hamilton in 2016: American visions of Manziel mirroring the success of Doug Flutie, another Heisman Trophy winner who moved north to find success, are outdated. Rather than scramble madly from wide sideline to sideline, successful CFL quarterbacks must now throw accurately and efficiently from the pocket above all else.

If anything, the league’s three-down structure discourages quarterbacks from taking chances on unscripted runs or off-schedule throws. Lost yardage on first down, or even a minimal gain, leads to the NFL equivalent of third-and-long, effectively quashing drives. Historically, according to league data, CFL teams convert first downs on second-and-10 or longer between 12 and 14 percent of the time. In 2017, they converted 35.9 percent on plays of second-and-7 or longer.

“A lot of guys start out up here by extending the play and trying to make things happen downfield,” Reilly said. “That’s how you can make up for a lack of seasoning. But that’s only going to take you so far. Defensive coordinators aren’t stupid. They can take that away and keep you in the pocket. You have to be able to go through your progressions and understand what the defenses are and where the advantages are.”

While he appreciates Manziel’s mobility, Jones said that — if anything — it’s less important in the CFL than in the NFL.

“Accuracy is the most important thing,” Jones said. “A lot of times, people think it’s guys with mobility and that kind of stuff, but to me, it’s always been accuracy with the football. You look at the guys that are at the top of the league with a chance at the Grey Cup, they’re not runners. They’re accurate passers. If you want to win it all, you have to have a guy that can see a guy and hit him.”

Can Manziel be that player? Jones thinks so. And you might be surprised to know that in his final college season, Manziel led all qualified players in completion percentage on throws from the pocket (73.5). But first, Manziel will have to master a set of rules and alternate structures that have tripped up many American quarterbacks north of the border.

During a phone conversation this week, Reilly detailed five differences quarterbacks have to adjust to while transitioning to the CFL. Here are those five differences in his words:

1. Twelve players on each side

Reilly’s breakdown: “Having 12 guys on offense, that sounds great. OK, I get an extra receiver. But the additional guy defensively allows defensive coordinators to draw up so many different coverages that you don’t even see in the States. There are essentially three safeties. When you get an extra guy out there, they can bring pressures that they can’t bring in the States. They can drop into certain zone coverages and things like that.

“You have your typical zones that you see in the NFL or in American football: Cover 2, Cover 3, Cover 4 and some combination. You may get two to one side, four to the other side, two-man, man, things like that. But the way that the defensive coordinators here can create different schemes in different zones, it’s not the same as in American football. The windows aren’t the same. How you read different coverages is not the same.”

2. Only three downs

Reilly’s breakdown: “You have to be extremely efficient with every single play that you have. We don’t have that extra down. We can’t just go in there and pound the ball up the middle and run the ball and try to get yards. If we’re going to run the ball on first down, we have to get 4 or 5 yards for it to feel successful. Likewise when you’re throwing the ball on first down. You need yards.”

3. Wider (about 12 yards) and longer (10) fields

Reilly’s breakdown: “When we’re on the left hash and we’re throwing the ball to the right sideline, you’re talking almost the width of an American football field. And so the windows that you have to be comfortable throwing in are different, understanding that the ball is going to be in the air longer and that the defensive backs have more time to break. That cushion that you might have in American football where a guy is open and you throw it, here that cushion and that window is different.

“You see it all the time with young guys that come up here and try to throw a corner route to the field side and the ball skips 10 yards short of the wide receiver. They’re like, ‘Wow, I’ve got to recalibrate and readjust.’ Everybody generally has a strong-enough arm to do it, but understanding what makes a guy actually open enough to throw the ball requires a different thought process.”

4. Twenty-second play clock and two timeouts

Reilly’s breakdown: “If you’re [at the line of scrimmage] and things are a little bit confusing, in American football, it’s the second quarter, you can burn a timeout. There’s no problem with that. Here in Canada, we get two timeouts for the game, we only have one challenge per game and we have to have a timeout to use a challenge. So if it’s the second quarter and we burn a timeout, we’ve just limited ourselves in what we can do potentially in crunch time if we need to throw a challenge flag.

“You can’t just snap the ball and throw it out of bounds, because it’s second-and-10 and you’ve pretty much wasted that drive. So that’s a big change as a quarterback, is knowing where the play clock is at all times and being able to get your guys in and out of the huddle at a fast tempo.

“You have to be able to assess what the defense is doing in a very short period of time, and if you’re trying to change out of the play with a pressure check, the operation has to be very, very quick. So I think everything in terms of mentally what you have to do pre-snap, it is all much more sudden.”

5. Pre-snap motions

Reilly’s breakdown: “That changes everything, too. It is an advantage to be able to have three or four receivers motioning from one side of the field to the other, and motioning toward the line of scrimmage to get a running start against the defense. That’s all great. But what you have to understand, too, is that the defense is also going to be moving around and making adjustments based on your motion. So when you’re at the line of scrimmage and you send your receivers in motion, you’ve got about two or three seconds before you’re going to snap the ball, and what the defense was showing you before the motions versus after the motions is going to be completely different.

BELLEVUE, Wash. — Shaquem Griffin says he has been an avid video game player since he was a kid, when he and his twin brother Shaquill would compete, with the loser owing the winner pushups.

Not having a left hand made it a challenge for Shaquem Griffin to maneuver the controller. That made the Seattle Seahawks rookie linebacker a natural choice to promote Microsoft’s new Adaptive Controller, which was designed for gamers like Griffin who have accessibility needs.

He spent part of his Thursday evening at a Microsoft store in Bellevue playing a game of Madden with a young Seahawks fan who also has accessibility needs. He let the young fan, Matthew, use the Adaptive Controller while Griffin was using one of its features — pedals connected via Bluetooth to a traditional controller, allowing him to use his feet to hit buttons he’d otherwise have difficulty getting to.

Griffin was born with amniotic band syndrome and had his left hand amputated at age 4.

“Me missing one hand, the left side of the controller, like the L-T, the L-B, the triggers and stuff, usually when I’m playing a game, it’s kind of hard to get to that trigger,” he said. “I usually have to use my leg and pressure to use L-T. … So as I’m playing, I don’t have to use this L-T button no more. I can use the pedals. So if I’m playing a game and I need to use the L-T button, I use my foot to press it and I’ll still be able to move around with everything else that I have. I don’t have to press it on my leg or anything. I just move around, pedal, and keep moving. I don’t have to slow down and have to look and make sure I’m pressing a button. I might slip, or if I eat popcorn, I might miss the button. But that device is so effective because I can use foot.”

Margie Strite, a community development specialist with Microsoft, said the product will be available for sale later this year.

RENTON, Wash. — When Brandon Marshall visited the Seattle Seahawks as a restricted free agent in 2010, the team flew him into its lakefront headquarters via a seaplane. It was a pull-out-all-the-stops move by Pete Carroll, who, in his first season in Seattle following nine at USC, was tapping into his recruiting background to try to woo one of the best available receivers.

The Seahawks didn’t need a seaplane to land Marshall eight years later. At 34 years old and coming off a pair of surgeries, he feels grateful to have another shot. He’s getting it in Seattle after signing a one-year deal that was agreed to on Tuesday.

“I didn’t have a ton of options,” Marshall said Wednesday following the Seahawks’ fifth organized team activity. “I think the sentiment around the league is that I’m done, and I get it. Rightfully so. When you get on the other side of 30 and your production slips and you have a big injury, people just count you out. So it was an interesting process. It was a humbling process, to say the least. There were some really tough days that I had to push through, mentally and physically, so for this to be an opportunity and come to [fruition], you can’t ask for a better situation. You’ve got probably a top-three quarterback, you’ve got one the best franchises, you’ve got a young nucleus, guys that are hungry and ready to compete.”

Marshall took part in Wednesday’s practice, sporting the No. 15 that he has worn for most of his NFL career. He caught some passes from Russell Wilson and Seattle’s other quarterbacks during positional periods, but he didn’t take part in any of the 11-on-11 drills.

“We just had to just ease him in today,” Carroll said. “Just get him started, get him on the field with us and Friday we’ll do a little bit more, just keep growing with it.”

Marshall’s contract can be worth up to $2 million with incentives, according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter. That may seem like a pittance for someone who’s been one of the most productive receivers of his era. Marshall has topped 1,000 yards in eight of his 12 seasons, most recently in 2015 with the New York Jets, and his six seasons with at least 100 catches are the most in NFL history, according to ESPN Stats & Information.