Taylor Heinicke: Patrick Mahomes' Praise 'Kinda Weird' but 'Pretty Damn Cool'

Taylor Heinicke was the talk of Super Wild Card Weekend, with the street free agent likely playing himself into a long NFL career after nearly leading the Washington Football Team to a win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at FedEx Field.

Heinicke even earned the praise of 2018 league MVP Patrick Mahomes, who said he had a "great game" on Twitter.

"Yeah, that's really cool. Again, it's kinda weird saying that, because the guy's younger than me, but the dude is, you know, he's the top-five quarterback in the league if not the best quarterback in the league. Again for him to be watching and for him to say that, it means a lot to me. It's pretty damn cool," Heinicke told Peter King of NBC Sports.

Washington signed Heinicke in December prior to a calf injury to starter Alex Smith. When Smith was unable to start in Saturday's matchup with the Bucs, Heinicke flourished in his spot, throwing for 306 yards and a touchdown and rushing for 46 yards and a score in the 31-23 loss.

A journeyman who bounced around the NFL from 2015 to 2018 before his career seemingly ended during the brief XFL renaissance, Heinicke was working on his engineering degree at Old Dominion when he got the call from Washington.

"You go back and look at a lot of things and you kind of learn stuff from yourself from the past, and you don't want those things to happen again," Heinicke told The Sports Junkies on 106.7 The Fan, per Chris Lingebach of Radio.com. "I learned a lot after the whole XFL thing kind of ended and I was at home trying to figure out what to do, what my next plan was."

Tom Brady told Heinicke he played a "hell of a game" after their NFC matchup, per King. Given Heinicke's performance with the spotlight at its brightest, the odds are he won't have to worry about using an engineering degree anytime soon.