Patrick Mahomes delivered Chiefs a message they need to heed now more than ever
The charter plane landed in Kansas City after midnight Monday morning, and while Chiefs players headed to their respective homes, head coach Andy Reid drove elsewhere.
To the office.
As players and staff worked their way off the team plane, quarterback Patrick Mahomes marked the official conclusion of a road trip to Buffalo with a ceremonial speech conveying a simple message.
On to Baltimore.
“This week’s over,” Mahomes said, as teammate and running back Isiah Pacheco recalled.
But Reid? The spirit of that message — get to work on the Ravens — became his reality before a good night’s sleep. His game-planning started at the team’s practice facility in the early-morning hours — where he stayed overnight rather than driving home.
“Slippery out there,” he quipped, explaining his reasoning for sleeping at the team facility.
What’s long been lost in the last half-decade of the Chiefs’ success — Sunday will be their sixth straight appearance in the AFC Championship Game, and they’ve played in three of the past five Super Bowls — is this part of the process.
Moving on. The Chiefs have turned it into an art fundamental to their recent playoff prosperity. It’s become the most cliche part of a Mahomes victory-huddle breakdown in a post-game locker room — a mention of the following week.
That, of course, is intentional.
More than anyplace else, it’s where their past experience — knowing the bigger picture because they’ve lived the bigger picture — can be beneficial this time of year. While the Ravens undoubtedly have bigger goals, it’s worth noting they are hosting the AFC Championship Game for the first time in half a century. There is some human nature to this, after all.
That’s all pertinent to mention now, during the Chiefs’ postseason run. Certainly.
But something else is relevant to this week, too. Perhaps.
The exception to the point.
To this day, for all of the accolades Mahomes has earned, the most spectacular thing he’s accomplished on a football field, he did it in 13 seconds. An improbable playoff comeback against the Bills, the day we learned 13 seconds was too much time to leave him, should lead his highlight reel — before Jet Chip Wasp and any of the double-digit comebacks.
“I’ll remember this the rest of my life,” Mahomes said immediately after that January 2022 Divisional Round game.
Only seven days later, though, that memory would take on a different context. The Chiefs blew a lead against the Cincinnati Bengals in the AFC title game, still the most surprising playoff loss in the Mahomes Era. That defeat is not only a piece of the 13-second memory — it is the must-not-forget conclusion to it.
Which is where the relation today becomes suitable. Months after that loss to the Bengals, some inside the organization would point back to the week earlier — the emotional high of an overtime win against a Bills team that most everyone had picked out as the Chiefs’ biggest challenge in the AFC.
How could you not take some time to celebrate it? It took a little more out of them, in retrospect. They ran out of gas.
Well, for all of the business-as-usual response to the playoff-opening win against Miami two weeks ago, the Chiefs unleashed a bit of emotion last Sunday in Buffalo. Who can blame them? They knew the game’s significance.
They were playing on the road in the AFC playoffs for the first time since Mahomes arrived. They were underdogs. They did not win by a three-score margin but were instead aided by a field goal attempt sailing wide right with less than two minutes to play. They didn’t seal the outcome until just 90 seconds remained on the clock.
Package all of that together, and it prompted some passion afterward — in actions and words that contrasted the week earlier.
That’s part of what we’ll remember about this group — the difficulty of this postseason path is a significant part of the story.
If they win.
This week’s trip to Baltimore not only keeps alive the opportunity to become the first repeat Super Bowl champions in two decades — the headline here — but keep alive the legacy of how.
The win in Buffalo — the setting for the team’s best offensive performance of the season on a per-play basis, the setting for Mahomes’ first career road playoff win, the setting for the postseason game in which the oddsmakers gave them their worst chance to advance — deserves a better conclusion than the one those 13 seconds received.
What comes next, not what came last, will shape how we remember the magnitude of that cold day in Buffalo. It sure altered how we remember the last date with Buffalo.
I’ve previously noted why this month offers a legacy postseason for Mahomes. He’s never had a more difficult path. Never had been a playoffs underdog before reaching the Super Bowl.
He survived his first encounter with these stakes last Sunday in Buffalo. He tossed aside a frustrating offensive year and played his best football of the season. That ought to be significant. Ought to be a good story.
And it could be.
Depending on what comes next.