Patrick Mahomes gave fans a moment to squint, speculate, and spiral all at once Sunday night.
Just before Kansas City kicked off against the Colts, broadcast cameras caught Mahomes tilting back a small bottle in the locker room. The liquid inside looked pale and slightly yellow under the lights, and that was enough to send the internet running with it. One widely shared clip was captioned, “Patrick Mahomes chugging vodka before the game 😭.”
From there, the reactions piled up fast on X. One fan wrote, “Im so happy I wasnt the only one who saw this and went, ‘Wait..is that??’
😂😂” Another jumped to the correct answer immediately: “That’s def pickle juice.” A third tossed in, “His dad is a bad influence,” while another pushed back on the vodka theory with, “That’s not vodka…”
The truth, as it turned out, was much less dramatic. Reporting after the broadcast confirmed the bottle held pickle juice, not alcohol.
Kansas City’s medical and performance staff have used it for years, and it’s part of the team’s longer-running collection of pregame habits under Andy Reid. Around the NFL, pickle juice has a reputation as a cramp-prevention tool because of its high sodium content, which is meant to help players avoid muscle issues in physical, high-intensity games.
Mahomes has already talked about that same hydration trick before, and teammates have been spotted drinking it on the sideline too. The odd-looking bottle only set off the wave of confusion because of the camera angle and the lighting, which made the liquid look a lot closer to a clear spirit than a sideline staple.
It was another viral Mahomes moment in a season that has already delivered a few of them, from his reaction to a reporter’s ringtone to another unexpected camera shot. This one just took a few minutes to go from eyebrow-raising to fully explained.
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