This weekend, the Kansas City Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes may very well bring his team to Super Bowl victory for the second time, a stunning feat for the 27-year-old quarterback. If he does, then you can rest assured that his brother Jackson will be in the stands, making a cringe TikTok video about it.
The 22-year-old influencer has more than one million followers on TikTok, where he’s partnered with such brands as Amazon Prime and Casetify and regularly posts low-energy videos of himself lip-synching, preening next to women’s butts, and dancing on the field at the Chiefs’ stadium, usually combining some of the above with lip-biting, gazing seductively at the camera, or flashing his impressive abs.
The son of Mets pitcher Pat Mahomes, Jackson majored in marketing at the University of Missouri Kansas City before embarking on his social media career, racking up more than a million followers on TikTok and more than 245,000 on Instagram. He started posting on the former platform in 2020, largely making simple dance videos, showcasing his ab workout routine or collaborating with creators like singer Ashley Newman and Alexis Cuban, daughter of Shark Tank‘s Mark Cuban; occasionally, his brother would make an appearance in his videos.
Like many niblings (or nepo baby siblings), Mahomes is frequently asked about his relationship to his famous brother, which he addressed in a 2021 Q&A video on his YouTube channel. “Do I use him for clout? No. I mean, uh, let’s just be honest. I don’t necessarily use him for clout, but it does have a lot of advantages and I get a lot of opportunities by being his brother, so that’s pretty cool. What is it like being related to him? It’s just like being related to anybody else,” he said in the video.
Mahomes, like many influencers, has garnered plenty of controversy for his off-camera antics. In 2021, he enraged fans of the Washington Commanders when he posted a video of himself at FedEx Field dancing atop the jersey number for Sean Taylor, a safety who was murdered during a home invasion in 2007 when he was 24 years old. Mahomes later issued an apology for the video, stating on Twitter, “I want to sincerely apologize for accidentally being on the Sean Taylor #21 at FedEx Field. We were directed to stand in that area and I meant absolutely no disrespect to him or his family.”
Mahomes also attracted criticism in 2021 for dunking water on Ravens fans during a Kansas City Chiefs away game after the Chiefs lost, prompting his brother to address the backlash in a press conference: “He’s been good at not trying to respond to that stuff. He takes a lot and he’s usually pretty good at it. He’ll learn from it and just try to stay away from those people best he can.”
Later that year, Mahomes also called out Kansas City’s SoT cocktail bar in a video accusing them of poor service, with the bar responding in a now-deleted post: “We are sorry that we set boundaries that you tried to ignore. Often times people with un-earned status and a sense of entitlement think they are above the rules and will lash out at the employee enforcing them.”
More recently, Mahomes garnered blowback for posting a video of himself packing for the Super Bowl, showing himself boarding a private jet with a Louis Vuitton bag in tow and sipping champagne in a marble bathroom. “Look how I spend my brothers money like I earned it!,” the top comment on the post reads.
In true influencer form, Jackson also has beef with Dave Portnoy, the highly controversial CEO of Barstool Sports. After years of Portnoy mocking his TikToks, Jackson posted a screengrab of a DM from Portnoy inviting him onto his podcast in 2021, with the caption, “Why would I go onto a podcast that continues to bash me and my family?” In his Instagram Story, Portnoy responded: “Cause you make Tik Toks dancing like an a**hole? Isn’t that part of the joke.”
To be fair to Mahomes, much of the ire directed at him appears to stem from old-school NFL fans’ discomfort with zoomer expressions of masculinity, with many mocking his dancing and his voice for its perceived effeminacy. (Jackson seems particularly sensitive to mockery of his voice, saying in one YouTube video that his “biggest insecurity” is his voice, and that when people on TikTok question his sexuality he finds it “really disrespectful” to his gay friends.) Some of the hate also seems to be pure speculation regarding his relationship with his brother, with many of his followers commenting on Patrick’s seemingly indifferent or chilly body language toward Jackson or even accusing him of bringing bad luck after a weak Chiefs’ performance on the field.
To some extent, Mahomes seems to be wounded by the hate he’s gotten on social media, lashing out in his Instagram Stories and claiming that the media is “destroying my life.” In the caption of one 2021 TikTok video, he says he is “way 2 sexy for hate comments,” and in another he posted a screengrab of his comments section with the caption “all of the hate that I receive really affects me. I honestly really struggle with it and am trying to stay strong, but it’s become too much.” Yet none of this seems to stop him from posting, although to be fair, his content is moderately more entertaining than the average Prudential Insurance Super Bowl commercial.