Quarterback Patrick Mahomes shone in the Kansas City Chiefs’ 27-19 victory over the Houston Texans, in an example he hopes will serve as motivation for his teammates, led by his friend Travis Kelce, after being in doubt with an ankle sprain in last week’s win over the Cleveland Browns.

From the Chiefs’ first possession, Mahomes’ message was clear as he proved to be unstoppable and ran for a 15-yard touchdown, and closed the game with 28 completions for 260 yards and another score.

“I ask a lot of the guys around me; I feel like if I’m going to ask them to play through pain, if I’m going to ask them to play through little cuts and bruises and stuff like that, I have to do it too. That’s something I pride myself on, being there with my guys and playing football,” Mahomes said in the postgame press conference.

Mahomes’ party won’t continue until Christmas Day game

The Kansas City Chiefs are close to securing the top spot as the number one seed in the AFC, they will do so with an eventual and almost unlikely defeat of the Buffalo Bills on Sunday against the New England Patriots, so they will have to wait until next Wednesday’s Christmas game, when they visit the Pittsburgh Steelers, in their third game in a span of 11 days, where Mahomes hopes to be ready.

“I would say in that game it hurt me a little bit the way I walked in general, whereas now I can move, walk and things like that, and now I’m just trying to get even better for this next game. I mean, we’re playing against a good football team and a great defense,” Mahomes said of the visit to the Steelers.

For his part, Chiefs head coach Andy Reid acknowledged that Mahomes spoils them by being so tough and it is a message of confidence for the locker room, because most players do not recover as his quarterback did.

“I didn’t think he could go out and run like that. He did a great job with the whole mentality from the beginning that he was going to go out and play. He didn’t miss a rep,” Andy Reid told reporters.