How Patrick Mahomes made Kansas City Chiefs a dynasty with third Super Bowl win
Eight years ago, Brett Veach locked himself into a dark room inside the Chiefs practice facility with the film on replay, asking another member of the front office, Mike Borgonzi, to join him there. Veach had the clicker in his hand.
“Look at this throw,” Veach would say, and then he’d move to another play.
“And this one.”
“Veach,” Borgonzi recalled replying, “It’s May.”
Ten months, in other words, before the draft would place Patrick Mahomes in Kansas City. But then again, Borgonzi said, “Some of the stuff he was doing, you didn’t see anyone, even in the NFL, doing.”
For everything that’s changed since Mahomes arrived in Kansas City, that’s remained true as ever.
It’s still not normal.
Even if he’s made it the norm.
Patrick Mahomes led the Chiefs to their third Super Bowl in five years, a thrilling 25-22 overtime victory in Las Vegas on Sunday as the latest.
And what a fitting way: They got the best of Mahomes on the heels of his worst.
It was a frustrating three-plus quarters. A Mahomes interception reached the low point.
But this is why they’re here. A vastly-improved defense. A terrific day on special teams.
But Mahomes.
We’d spent the season wondering whether the Chiefs would be better off having the game in the hands of that defense or the offense with the game on the line.
The answer always comes up Mahomes.
Even as an underdog.
“Just know that the Kansas City Chiefs are never underdogs,” he said. “Just know that.”
Five seasons ago, Mahomes did what his more than two dozen predecessors in Kansas City could not over a half-century of opportunities. On Sunday, he did what two decades of his predecessors in the NFL could not.
The Chiefs are the first back-to-back champions since the New England Patriots in 2004-05. They’ve won three of the past five Super Bowls. He is just the fifth quarterback to start and win three Super Bowls.
He is on a pace unlike the NFL has ever seen — but he has long provided Kansas City something it has never seen. Something it had long been starving to see.
He is the world’s greatest reply to a question that overwhelmed a city: When is it going to be my turn? The greatest rebound to a quarter-century of relationship heartbreak.
One would’ve been enough — or at least darn well should’ve been enough. But we now have championships to compare, Super Bowl teams to contrast.
And in that vein, Mahomes has delivered his masterpiece. He got one in a year few expected. The one that, on paper, necessitated the toughest path in NFL history. The one that comes seven weeks after falling so flat on Christmas Day that he had to remind his team, Forget the No. 1 seed — we might not even make the playoffs.
That has been lost in the Mahomes story. For a 28-year-old who makes everything look simple, his postseason runs have actually been marked by their adversity — you know, the kind of adversity that used to be responsible for early playoff exits. It’s easy to forget this franchise was once known for its postseason ineptitude, to the point where you came to expect it. Well, easy to forget if you weren’t among those who lived it. That feeling of inevitability became ingrained in a fan base that required some time to adjust to what they have.
Make no mistake: The adversity remains. It just makes the ending that much sweeter.
Mahomes returned from a dislocated kneecap to win his first title. His mowed down the Jaguars, Bengals and Eagles on a bum ankle last year, his signature play a scramble up the middle of the defense on a game-winning drive.
And this year, over the past four weeks, it was not an injury that provided the obstacle but rather a different form of adversity.
Doubt.
This Chiefs struggled during the regular season. They were underdogs Sunday against San Francisco, same as two weeks earlier in Baltimore in the AFC Championship Game, same as the week prior in Buffalo. But a man who has embraced Kansas City eagerly embraced the role in which the Midwestern city likes to characterize itself: unrightfully an underdog.
He had been “turnt” to enter the playoffs as a road dog, if for no other reason than to prove he could make it a neat fit, even as a first-time fit.
He just won a title in a down year.
It’s hard enough to get Mahomes when he’s at his best. But the rest of the league just let him get one during a season in which the Chiefs were at their worst. If you couldn’t get him now, then when?
The Chiefs swirled change around Mahomes. They defined this era by a willingness to adapt — by a willingness to prioritize a calculated risk over sentimentality. That’s with the wide receiver room, the defense, the offensive line, you name it. They’ve traded All-Pro players. They’ve let others walk.
This is not a team filled with a long list of three-time champions. Mahomes, Travis Kelce and Chris Jones are the only three players to start all three games. Harrison Butker, James Winchester and Derrick Nnadi will add a third ring, too.
But for all of the change of the last half-decade, their constant remains more than enough.
It’s still Mahomes at quarterback.
Same player.
With a twist.
The best quarterback in the world has re-invented himself each season, but perhaps never more than 2023. In 2018, his first season as a stater, his first MVP season, Mahomes ranked sixth in the NFL in the average distance of his attempted targets. This year, he ranked dead last in that same category, per PFF. Earlier this year, he announced to us all that, hey, “We can punt.”
That is among his defining characteristics.
He’ll adapt — if that’s the requirement. That is part of his nature, but too part of his nurture. His friends played not only football together but basketball and baseball too, and before they share anything about his statistics or accomplishments, they’re quick to point toward the mentality they all shared.
Whatever it takes. Always on to the next game, they said. It’s part of what brought them together.
They were together again Sunday, a group of Mahomes’ best friends occupying seats inside Allegiant Stadium — and even as they predicted he’d be a professional athlete one day, they are stunned this is real.
As is this: What we’ve witnessed are the opening chapters of a career, not the epilogue. Len Dawson was 34 when he brought Kansas City its first NFL championship.
Mahomes is six years younger.
He has broken conventional wisdom for what a franchise quarterback looks like and what a quarterback plays like.
He has broken what must have felt like a curse in the city he now calls home.
And more recently, he has broken the model that makes expensive quarterback contracts a prohibitor to success.
Eight NFL teams hired a new head coach this offseason, all the while the Chiefs were still playing football. Even more will employ a new quarterback next season.
They’re all in search of one thing:
To replicate what the Chiefs have found.
Mahomes turned Kansas City into the city of envy. Gone are the days that place them as the subject of pity. The projected No. 1 pick in the spring’s NFL Draft is the projected No. 1 pick because, well, he’s shown glimpses of doing what the quarterback in Kansas City can do.
A glimpse we got on the final two drives.
The game-tying. And the game-ending.
With the same ending as a year ago:
Bet on Mahomes.
Especially the underdog.
This story was originally published February 11, 2024 at 10:26 PM.