Get used to this, KC: Patrick Mahomes leads Chiefs to another Super Bowl
Patrick Mahomes emerged from behind a black curtain inside a room at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, still wearing pads but with a gray shirt covering his uniform. The script across the front recognized the Super Bowl championship he’d won just half an hour earlier, with a hat on his head to match.
As he stepped to the podium for his post-game press conference, not even yet having the chance to actually celebrate the title, no more than a couple of minutes passed before a slew questions narrowed to one topic.
Can you do this all over again next year?
One more win now.
On Sunday, Mahomes led the Chiefs back to the Super Bowl, a 38-24 victory against the Bills sending them to Tampa Bay for a meeting with the Tom Brady-led Buccaneers.
In 14 days ago, Mahomes will guide the Chiefs to a second consecutive Super Bowl appearance after they went 50 years between them. On a national scale, he will be the youngest quarterback in league history to make two appearances in the NFL championship game. On a local scale, he is the man most responsible for the on-field turnaround of a franchise that put its fans through years — nay, decades — of postseason heartbreak.
Until three seasons ago, the organization had not won a home playoff game in a quarter-century. A fanbase so accustomed to letdowns prompted one man to literally leave a playoff game early after the Chiefs had trailed 24, fearful he was some sort of bad voodoo. They Chiefs scored six consecutive touchdowns after he left.
The Chiefs had asked 29 quarterbacks to find an avenue to North America’s biggest sports day since Len Dawson led them there in January 1970. It took a 30th option before one delivered. And then it took all of 12 months before he delivered again.
Mahomes passed for 325 yards and three touchdowns Sunday night, the star of a third straight AFC Championship Game played inside Arrowhead Stadium.
Get used to this, Kansas City, because this guy is locked up for the next 10 seasons. It might never be this good again. It sure wasn’t before.
Before Mahomes arrived, a stadium that conveniently refers to itself as the world’s loudest had not done enough to energize a playoff win in 25 years. There were losses with missed field goals and losses without punts. There was a quarterback who caught his own touchdown pass off a deflection. There was the feeling anything that could go wrong would go wrong.
With Mahomes, there is the feeling that anything is possible. In almost the proverbial snap of the fingers, he has altered the optimism of a fanbase. Heck, of a city.
Mahomes has won five playoff games inside Arrowhead Stadium and he won another at Miami Gardens. At 25 years old, there will be more.
But no season — none — will be quite like this one.
When the NFL most valuable player is announced, it’s likely Mahomes will finish second in the race to Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers. Rodgers season ended Sunday. Mahomes will be playing into February.
Mahomes has won 16 of the 17 games in which he’s started this season. He threw 38 touchdowns and just six interceptions in the regular season, the best ratio of his career. He led the league in yards per game. There were some nights in which he simply refused to get beat, like a game-winning drive in Las Vegas in which he thought to himself before getting the ball, “We’re going to score.”
It was a year he never could have anticipated. Who could have?
Only seven days ago, Mahomes needed help to balance his feet as he attempted to stand after a tackle. He entered the NFL’s concussion protocol, placing in doubt his season — and along with it any real hope the Chiefs had of becoming the first team to repeat as Super Bowl champions in 16 years.
Some 202 days ago, Mahomes committed to making the Chiefs for the next decade, the largest contract in North American sports now residing in one of its smallest markets.
Some 234 days ago, Mahomes forgot about all that — sidestepped football altogether — and placed himself at the center of the player-driven Black Lives Matter movement in the league, a stance that prompted a response from the NFL commissioner.
As we said, it’s been an eventful year since Mahomes last strolled down Grand Boulevard on a double-decker bus.
A year that rolls on for at least two more weeks.
This story was originally published January 24, 2021 at 9:19 PM.