Rumors About Patrick Mahomes That Have Been Firmly Debunked

Patrick Mahomes' meteoric rise to fame has made him the subject of some truly bizarre rumors. In certain cases, the beloved Kansas City Chiefs quarterback has stepped in to end the gossip before it runs amok. Back in 2022, former NFL player Rich Ohrnberger shared a rumor about Patrick and Brittany Mahomes that had fans going wild. As Us Weekly noted at the time, in a since-deleted tweet, he claimed that after having a chat with Brittany and her brother-in-law Jackson Mahomes, Ohrnberger learned that Patrick had barred them from attending any more games, elaborating, "Not surprisingly, Mahomes believes that Jackson and Brittany have become a distraction, and their sideline antics are bad for his brand." 

This arguably seemed pretty plausible during that year's NFL season since Brittany wasn't faring too well with fans regardless. A few weeks before Ohrnberger's tweet, the WAG got widespread backlash for sharing a video of her spraying champagne on unsuspecting Chiefs fans in the middle of winter. However, Patrick took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to proudly proclaim that the controversy wasn't enough to keep his partner from cheering him on, writing, "Y'all just be making stuff up these days," with three laughing emojis. 

However, on several other occasions, the rumors have been so strange that the Chiefs co-captain apparently decided they were not worth his time. For instance, in 2023, one of Brittany's tattoos sparked questions about her romance with Patrick since it resembled the symbol of polyamory. Neither of them felt compelled to straight-up deny the story, possibly because it wasn't even the most bizarre piece of gossip going around about the NFL star.

In January 2025, a rumor that Patrick Mahomes bought a hotel after experiencing racism from the staff quickly gained traction online. According to a since-deleted Facebook post detailing the claim, the Kansas City Chiefs star received questioning looks from the hotel's employees because his casual outfit wasn't up to the dress code. After Mahomes noticed the dirty looks, he supposedly wasted no time purchasing the hotel and firing them all. 

Needless to say, the father of three didn't actually face a scenario that seemed like it came straight out of Julia Roberts' "Pretty Woman." And there were plenty of indicators that the viral posts from the time were fake too. For starters, the image of Mahomes walking into the hotel was very obviously edited since his feet didn't appear to be casting a shadow or even touching the ground. Further, Snopes pointed out that the image was taken from a 2023 Instagram photo of Mahomes exiting a plane. 

Naturally, the other images featured in the article were also from the Chiefs quarterback's public appearances. And to top it all off, Snopes also discovered that even the rumor's concept itself wasn't original since a video positing that fellow pro-athlete Shaquille O'Neal had endured the same horrific ordeal had floated around only a month prior. In fact, the fast-spreading posts about Mahomes had used the videos' thumbnails too. Of course, that story wasn't based in reality either. While the rumor may be decidedly false, Mahomes does own a steakhouse restaurant with Travis Kelce.

After the Kansas City Chiefs lost the 2025 Super Bowl to the Philadelphia Eagles, Patrick Mahomes took responsibility for his team's mistakes in a press conference, acknowledging, "I take ownership in the loss, probably more than any one in my career," per USA Today. However, someone manipulated his past press conferences to make an eerily realistic AI-generated video of him criticizing himself with some harsh words and using some highly inappropriate language to describe how the Eagles outplayed the Chiefs. 

Although the real-life Mahomes has been a total Swiftie for a long time, his AI counterpart revealed that he had urged Travis Kelce to stop bringing her to games. In addition to criticizing the star tight end for being too fixated on his looks during the all-important game, "Mahomes" slammed Chiefs coach Andy Reid for failing to draft a good enough game plan. The video garnered millions of views, many of whom realized it was AI-generated while others were more easily swayed.  Unfortunately, Mahomes dealt with strange rumors even when the Chiefs clinched the win at the 2023 Super Bowl. 

In the aftermath, there was a viral tweet professing that the Chiefs' victory was under scrutiny after the NFL learned that he had used performance-enhancing drugs during halftime. The wild story garnered millions of views, and some found it credible since the person behind the account claimed to be a sports journalist named Simon Charles with a Boston Globe logo in their header. However, Reuters found zero record of them ever working for the newspaper while their profile picture was a stock photo. Like the rest of their account, the claim about Mahomes was also completely false.

In April 2025, a rumor that Patrick Mahomes had donated every cent of his $4.7 million signing bonus to numerous charities, which aided with the upliftment of homeless people, spread like wildfire on the Internet. When a Facebook fan group for the Kansas City Chiefs shared the post, it received over 100,000 reactions, and several people patted the sports star on the back for using his wealth for good. Some may have found the post credible simply because it featured an image of the Chiefs quarterback signing a giant check. 

However, as Snopes clarified, the pic appeared to have been AI-generated since the words on the check didn't make any sense whatsoever, and the iconic Chiefs logo didn't appear real either. In fact, the entire Facebook group was sketchy since the information on their moderators' profiles appeared to be fake, with them hailing from "York, New York" or "New York, Florida." And, of course, there were no other credible reports on the matter despite Patrick's popularity. Somewhat surprisingly, that's not the only time that the Chiefs quarterback's benevolence led to a fake rumor either. 

In March 2020, Former Secretary of State of Missouri Jason Kander tweeted that he heard a story about how Patrick footed the bills of everyone at a Kansas restaurant because he was so pleased that nobody in there disturbed him and Brittany Mahomes when they were having dinner. However, there didn't seem to be any stock to the heartwarming story since there were no firsthand accounts and it seemed eerily similar to another account with former football player Troy Polamalu at its center.

In March 2025, a Facebook post asserting that Elon Musk had offered $10 million to Patrick Mahomes got tens of thousands of reactions. The article that the post linked out to falsely claimed that the Tesla founder had tweeted, "Patrick Mahomes has redefined the game of football. I stand with you, Patrick." According to the report, the Chiefs quarterback had made it clear that he didn't feel comfortable accepting his generous offer, tweeting back, "Keep it and spend it on something that actually helps people." 

The article went as far as to claim that Mahomes had offered some insight into his decision to reporters by arguing, "If Elon Musk wants to make an impact, there are millions of people out there who could benefit from a financial push in areas like healthcare, education, and housing." Of course, no part of the story was actually true. A quick search on X revealed that the pair never had the exchange in question. In fact, the tech billionaire and Mahomes hadn't ever tweeted about each other at all.

As with most of these bizarre rumors, there was no other credible reporting to back up the original claim, despite the two high-profile celebrities involved. When Snopes ran the article through AI content-checker Hive, it found there was a 99.8% probability that it was AI-generated. At another point, there was also a false rumor that Musk had been banned from attending Chiefs games altogether but that, too, came from an article that was likely AI-generated, according to Snopes.

In October 2024, Kansas City Chiefs' win against the San Francisco 49ers garnered major controversy because of Patrick Mahomes' plays. Some critics believed he had unfairly used a loophole by tricking the defenders into going out of bounds to gain a crucial advantage. As the criticism started ramping up, Patrick stepped in to defend himself. "I'm never going to put a defender in a bad spot by trying to use a loophole in the rules to my advantage," the quarterback declared, according to an X post by senior NFL reporter James Palmer. 

The 2024 Super Bowl MVP added that his plays naturally let him out of bounds sometimes and he would never go out of his way to play dirty. Unfortunately, Patrick has also been accused of being a cheater off the field too. Over the years, his relationship with Brittany Mahomes has been plagued by several shocking infidelity rumors. Although neither of them has flat-out denied the gossip, Brittany has made it clear that she isn't fazed by the female attention that her husband gets. 

In response to an Instagram Q&A in December 2023, Brittany labeled the women who openly flirted with Patrick as "disrespectful," admitting, "I did use[d] to have a very hard time and get extremely annoyed. But I am now to a point where I could care less!" (via E! News). So it's obvious there's a lot of trust in their long-standing relationship. Additionally, most of these cheating rumors stem from one-off social media posts that usually don't have any credible evidence to back them up.