The Super Bowl welcoming party — what the NFL calls its Opening Night — is a ridiculous couple of hours, really.

There’s rapper Tech N9ne to your left, comedian Carrot Top on your right, and an Andy Reid impersonator in the crowd somewhere. For some reason. Oh, and across the field, Guillermo Rodriguez from Jimmy Kimmel Live is asking Chiefs offensive lineman Trey Smith to autograph his stomach.

It’s more show than business, more entertainment than work — and that’s not just because we’re on a football field in Las Vegas.

The opening five minutes of questions for Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes came from an 11-year-old kid, and they progressed through a two-player fantasy draft. That was new, but it still fits the flavor these things have adopted over the years, and that the Chiefs have been to enough of them that we can compare and contrast them is still a bit surreal when you remember they went 50 years without an invitation.

But through all of the distractions in a setting begging for them, there was one moment that just might have accidentally and unexpectedly meant something.

It came after Patrick Mahomes spent the required hour at a podium answering questions. In fact, it wasn’t about a question or an answer at all.

Placed on stage with San Francisco quarterback Brock Purdy, Mahomes was attempting to praise the 49ers collectively, his answer booming to the crowd inside Allegiant Stadium.

That reply went something like this: “We’re playing a great 49ers team. We’re going to go out there and play our best football and see what happens.”

Pretty standard, right?

Well, except I left one part out. As Mahomes articulated his answer, a pro-49ers crowd — with some probable help from a contingent of local Raiders fans — began to boo.

They weren’t booing the reply.

It was all for him.

That invoked this: “I appreciate it, Niners Nation. We’re here.” Then he cupped his hand around his ear, asking for the boos to grow louder.

And if you know this guy — particularly if you’ve paid any attention to the last couple of weeks — you should have had just one thought.

Uh oh.

This has been a don’t-poke-the-bear postseason from the greatest quarterback in the world. Merely by voicing that they are rooting for the opposition, the man looking for any sort of slight saw boos as a finger in his chest.

The tone, the demeanor and the body language revealed as much as the words themselves. In poker — why not, it’s Vegas — we’d call that a tell.

The words aren’t meaningless, either.

I understand it might seem silly. Maybe if you have to know the guy. Maybe you just have to know the past two weeks. Take a look back at the Chiefs’ path to Super Bowl LVIII. Sure, they played on the road for the first time in Mahomes’ playoff career, not once but twice.

A bit more specific, though: After his first touchdown pass against the Ravens a week ago, the tremendous back-shoulder throw to Travis Kelce, Mahomes was in mid-sentence by the time he returned to the Chiefs’ sideline.

You might recognize his words.

“We here!” he shouted. “We’re (bleeping) here.”

A week earlier, after the Chiefs won in Buffalo, I walked through the locker room and asked teammates about how Mahomes practiced for his first road playoff game.

Wide receivers Rashee Rice and Marquez Valdes-Scantling literally started laughing, and then they shared a story of how they had to slow Mahomes down in the week’s first walk-through.

“He’s been the good guy of the league for awhile now, but don’t let him fool you — he loved being the villain,” Valdes-Scantling said.

The villain. You know, the character who might be the subject of a few boos.

The playoffs have offered Mahomes an opportunity to play a new role — one that, those who know him best, say he’s long waited to embrace.

An Opening Night meant for entertainment provided us a peek of where his mind rests ahead of the real assignment this week.

The questions didn’t do it.

The boos did.

This story was originally published February 6, 2024, 6:00 AM.