NEW ORLEANS — The lights flip off, and the most prominent quarterback in the world turns his attention to a big screen.

For the previous half-hour, give or take, Patrick Mahomes would have sat in a hotel meeting room alongside other quarterbacks and a few members of the Chiefs’ coaching staff, covering the finer details of situational football. Fourth downs. Two-minute drill. The script for the initial 15 plays of the game.

But that’s over.

As the room darkens, the volume on a transportable speaker — they never forget to pack the speaker — is tilted toward its max, and you might glance over to see Mahomes’ knee start to bounce and his head bob.

Have you ever wondered what the final hours are like before Mahomes plays in a football game watched by literally hundreds of millions?

Take a step inside this room.

Here it is.

The lights-off, speakers-blaring ritual is an appetizer for the weekly entree. That routine, reserved for weeks following wins, and only wins, pre-dates Mahomes’ arrival in Kansas City. But it’s taken on a new life now.

It comes with a clear objective: Get No. 15 hyped.

And it’s pretty darn effective.

The night before a game, home or away, no matter— or, say, Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans this weekend— the big-screen projection shows a sizzle reel of the franchise quarterback’s best plays.

Last week. All season. Maybe even entire career.

The collection is heavy on clips from the previous week — fresh material, you know — but mixes in relevant clips from earlier in the season, or maybe even from a previous matchup with the opponent that awaits the following day.

The soundtrack for the piece is often rap music, something with some bounce, and if the coaches have picked correctly that particular week, it hits Mahomes just right. The booming voice of Chiefs play-by-play announcer Mitch Holthus overlays some of the bigger moments.

All for an exclusive audience of fewer than 10.

But for those 10?

Whew.

“We all sit there in silence waiting for it to start, and by the time it ends, we’re all fired up watching it,” third-string quarterback Chris Oladokun said. “By the end of it, you’re just like, man, let’s just go out there and play the game right now.”

“It’s always great,” backup quarterback Carson Wentz said. “And then you realize you have to get a good night’s sleep.”

“We pop up, and we’re fired up and ready to go,” quarterbacks coach David Girardi said.

“You can feel his energy when he walks out of the room,” said Dan Williams, assistant quarterbacks coach, of Mahomes. “If you can find him that extra 1 percent — you always want to help as much as possible.”

So how does it come together?

Well, it’s an intricate process.

Girardi and Williams pick out highlights they’d like featured, preferably some that illustrate how he’s already had success doing something they’ll ask of him the following day. Girardi and Williams will try to conclude with a motivational message of sorts, a bulletin that has popped up at some point during the week.

Lastly, the music. It has to be just right.

Williams has taken over the primary role for the selection, a job he does not take lightly.

“You kind of start on Monday,” Williams said. “And then go through the week and see what his mood or vibe is.”

By late in the week, the coaches turn over a vision to Rob Alberino, the Chiefs’ vice president of production, and their in-house production team brings the vision to life.

The reaction from Mahomes is like a Johnny Carson grading scale.

“You can tell when he’s feeling it,” Williams said. “But for the most part, every Saturday, he’s feeling juiced up based on the song choice or the highlights. Everybody’s locked in.”

It’s the closer. It’s how they exit the final meeting of the week.

The entrance? The Chiefs break into small groups after dinner at their team hotel every night that precedes a game. The home games, too. The final meeting puts about eight people total — the combination of three quarterbacks and five coaches — in a hotel room. No one else is allowed in.

It’s there, before the sizzle, when the offensive game plan becomes a polished product.

Less hype, more conversation.

Mahomes is relaxed but talkative in those meetings, as Wentz described it, going through his preferred plays for the potential biggest moments of the game.

This Saturday night, at a downtown New Orleans hotel, head coach Andy Reid will turn to Mahomes. The coach will ask his quarterback which play, from options they’ve run in practice during the week, he prefers if the Chiefs face a fourth-and-1 late in the game.

What about a four-minute offense play to close out a game? What about the first play of the night? What is he most comfortable running with the game on the line?

It’s this meeting that delivered the Chiefs’ game-clinching play of the AFC championship game a year ago, a 32-yard throw to Marquez Valdes-Scantling that Mahomes had specifically requested late Saturday night.

It made the highlight reel a week later. It fired up Mahomes to watch it.

He has only one more reel to watch this season, late Saturday evening.

But he could make for a pretty good start on some sizzle for next fall.

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