The dream for any great quarterback, and there has never been a greater quarterback than Patrick Mahomes, is to take your team down the field at the end of the big game. On Sunday night in Vegas, just to make sure everybody knew who they were watching, Mahomes did it twice in the Super Bowl with his team losing to the 49ers. You always hear in sports about athletes rising to the moment. Mahomes is the moment. That ought to be his nickname.
Mahomes proved once again at Allegiant Stadium why he is the biggest star we have in American sports right now. Not LeBron. Not Steph. Not even Taylor Swift. Him.
Sometimes the story in sports is exactly what it is supposed to be. With no disrespect to a gallant 49ers team, the main storyline of Super Bowl coming into the game was Mahomes, and that is exactly what it was at the end of regulation and then at the end of overtime. The difference in the game was him.
With all that Travis Kelce does and all that Andy Reid does and all that Steve Spagnuolo, an even better coordinator than Bill Belichick was, does with his defense, the difference in pro football right now is Mahomes. The Chiefs have him and nobody else does.
“Give that man the crown,” Travis Kelce said when it was over, on this night when Mahomes and the Chiefs were playing against history as much as they were playing against the 49ers.
Tom Brady has won more Super Bowls. So, too, did Joe Montana, who played in four and won them all and threw 11 touchdown passes in those games without an interception. Terry Bradshaw won four. Troy Aikman won three. Mahomes, throwing and running and then running and throwing, is better at playing the position, doing all the athletic things and quarterback things to win the game, is better at amazing than all of of them.
He was asked after the Chiefs had finally won 25-22, after he had thrown the overtime pass to Mecole Hardman that finally won it about getting the ball after the Niners had kicked a field goal on their first overtime possession, about what he was thinking before the last Chiefs drive of their remarkable season:
“I had all the belief in the world that we were going to go down the field and win the game.”
And the Chiefs did.
When it was fourth-and-one, which meant fourth-and-the-season on that last drive, of course it was his own number called on an option play, and of course he ran for the first down that kept the drive and the season going. Kyle Shanahan made a mistake taking the ball first in overtime for a few reasons, and one of them was that it automatically turned Super Bowl 58 into a four-down game for the Chiefs. Mahomes made them pay. There would be another third-down conversion later.
Finally it was a three-yard pass to Hardman with three seconds left in the first overtime period, and the Chiefs had won this Super Bowl by three. Again: Three Super Bowls for Mahomes. Three Super Bowl MVP’s, after a night when he threw for 333 yards.
They called the pass to Hardman a walk-off score. In Vegas, it was like walking away from the table with all the money. And another Lombardi Trophy. Once again, the Chiefs had come from 10 points behind to win a Super Bowl. They have done it to the 49ers twice. They did it to the Eagles last season.
“We can make it easier sometimes,” Mahomes said. “But what’s the fun in that?”
Kelce, who caught nine balls from Mahomes in this game, was asked what the conversation was like at halftime after the 49ers had pushed the Chiefs around, held them to a field goal, really should have been ahead by more than 10-3.
“All we did was circle the wagons,” Kelce said.
There would be brilliant, daring work from the Chiefs’ defense in the second half, because brilliant and daring is what Spagnuolo’s players do. When the Chiefs needed to hold the 49ers to a field goal in overtime, Spagnuolo sent everybody except Taylor Swift after Brock Purdy on third-and-four and made him miss. But there was even more brilliance and more daring from the quarterback, on his way to 34 completions and two touchdown passes and, in addition to all that, 66 rushing yards.
Jalen Hurts had more rushing yards in the last Super Bowl than Mahomes had in Allegiant Stadium. Hurts had 70 against the Chiefs. But until Sunday night, no Super Bowl quarterback had ever thrown for more than 325 and rushed for more than 50.
This was not just his moment. This was his defining moment. Or moments, plural. He took the Chiefs 64 yards on 11 plays to tie the game at the end of regulation, on a Harrison Butker field goal. Also with three seconds left, in this game when the Chiefs were like Steph Curry raining down three’s on the 49ers. Then, when it was 22-19 49ers, it was the 75-yard drive that won the Super Bowl for the Chiefs. On a night when Mahomes completed at least two passes to eight different receivers, he was 8-for-8 on that drive in overtime, with all the money truly on the table.
“The conversation at halftime was let’s just go back to being us,” Mahomes said.
After that, it was all about Mahomes being Mahomes. Johnny Unitas once took the Colts down the field in overtime to beat the Giants in a championship game, a game that made pro football a big deal in this country. Brady did it overtime against the Falcons. Eli Manning did it to Brady’s Patriots on night in Glendale, Ariz. Montana did it that time against the Bengals in Miami. There have been others.
Mahomes did it twice on Sunday night. Kelce said these Chiefs had reached another tier by winning their third Super Bowl, and second in a row. So, too, did Patrick Mahomes. Give that man the crown.
