WATCH Why Patrick Mahomes struggled in Chiefs’ Super Bowl loss — and a lesson he must learn
WATCH Why Patrick Mahomes struggled in Chiefs’ Super Bowl loss — and a lesson he must learn
Patrick Mahomes walked in the locker room at halftime, a 30-minute reprieve when it felt like they probably could’ve used a week, and told his teammates he stunk.
More than two hours later, as the Eagles were enjoying a trophy presentation after demolishing the Chiefs 40-22 in Super Bowl LIX, Mahomes sat in front of reporters for 12 minutes, and he told us all he stunk.
“I take ownership of this loss probably more than any loss of my entire career,” the Chiefs quarterback said.
Maybe 20 minutes later, he hopped on a team bus leaving Caesars Superdome, opened up his social media account, and well, told the entire world he stunk.
“I let y’all down today,” he wrote.
For nearly a decade now, Mahomes has made a living out of doing something we’ve never seen. On Sunday, the NFL’s first three-peat on the line, that sentence took on an entirely new meaning.
The man most responsible for the Chiefs inching toward a three-peat is as responsible as anyone for its failure with just one game left to check off the list. A player who has built one of the best resumes in NFL history by his response to in-game adversity was utterly overwhelmed by it.
So, yes, we saw something we’ve not seen before, and I don’t want to hear the Tampa Bay retort, because that wasn’t on him.
This was, a lot of it.
Not all of it, sure. The Eagles are the first team capable of exploiting every Chiefs weakness — they completely ravaged the Chiefs’ offensive line, silenced their defensive line and exposed the limitations of the receiving core. They made it a tough assignment for any quarterback.
But the Eagles saw a weakness nobody outside their building was talking about 24 hours earlier.
In Mahomes.
In the coming days, weeks, months, even years, you’re going to hear a lot about what unfolded here in New Orleans. You’re going to be told it will be used as some sort of motivational tool for a 29-year-old quarterback who has a lot of good football left in him — though is absent the guarantee he will have another chance at this stage.
And, look, I’m not here to argue those points are wrong. He probably will find motivation in having this game forever stuck in his mind.
But there’s something far more important he can — he must — take from this rear-end kicking than putting the Eagles logo on some sort of punching bag and whacking away.
A defensive coordinator just broadcast to 200 million people that believes he has an answer for Mahomes, or at least part of one, and that it’s not restricted to the supporting cast. It entails exposing the main character.
Mahomes was awful in the first half. Like, Carson Wentz might’ve outplayed him in that Week 18 game in Denver. Two interceptions that had no prayer, leaving only a debate over which is most inexplicable, set up Eagles touchdowns; and Cooper DeJean just went ahead and ran one of them back himself.
After his offensive line gave him plenty of reason to be nervous — it was atrocious — Mahomes played spooked, first running from pass-rushers but then sprinting from ghosts.
But here’s what’s most troubling about it all: Eagles coordinator Vic Fangio didn’t fool Mahomes. This wasn’t Rocky Balboa coming out to fight Apollo Creed right-handed. There wasn’t a need for a surprise.
Fangio, per Next Gen Stats, called zero blitzes in the game. Zero! (Mahomes thought he recalled one, but exactly one.)
Mahomes dropped back to throw 42 times, and on 40 of those, the Eagles played zone defense. They picked out a dead-red fastball hitter and threw him the 12-to-6 curveball once. Then twice. Then they threw him 38 more. And Mahomes still spent the night buckling his knees.
Fangio installed a game plan, sat back, kicked his feet up and said, Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid can’t beat this.
And he was right.
The question is not, therefore, about an emotional response to what happened. It’s about the details.
Just ask him.
“They were going to make me be a fundamental quarterback from the pocket and take what’s there,” Mahomes said. “That’s something I have to get better at.”
The most noteworthy part of a gracious 12-minute news conference came when he was asked how he’d frame this season — 15-2 (really 15-1), a fifth trip to the Super Bowl in six seasons.
When put that way, it seems like we’re really asking for perfection, no? It does feel necessary to mention that this three-year run the Chiefs just completed, if they did not complete a three-peat, is the best in NFL history. The other 31 teams have a word for the past three Chiefs seasons: unachievable.
A 40-6 deficit in the most-watched sporting event in the world has a way of changing perspective in the moment, to be sure.
And that 40-6 deficit is screaming for us to look at the big picture. To look at how. To look at why.
They cut off Mahomes’ running lanes, asking their defensive line to stay disciplined as they were rushing the passer. (That they still got home is a failure of the offensive line.) And they dropped back into good old-fashioned cover shells.
“I’m going to have to find a way this offseason to combat what defenses are doing to me as far as rush lanes and different coverages that they’re playing,” Mahomes said. “That’s the beauty of football — you never can be satisfied with just coming out there and playing and thinking you’re going to have success. These defense are going to continue to get better and better, so I have to get better.
“I take a lot of ownership in that, and I want to hopefully come back and play better football next season.”
What we saw Sunday, he’s saying, is the culmination of what he’s put on tape for a season.
Maybe we missed it.
The Eagles sure didn’t.
Mahomes is short-changing himself a bit on his success against zones, but there’s merit to the overall point. The Eagles’ form of zone, non-blitz coverage fell into cover-4 shell on 60% of the snaps, per NGS, the third most any defense has played in a single game since 2018.
Mahomes faced that particular coverage combination more than any quarterback this year, per FTN Network data, and he averaged 5.3 yards per dropback against it, which ranked 30th among 44 quarterbacks.
It crescendoed with a telling moment in the first half. The Chiefs trailed 24-0, backs against the wall in a manner that typically evokes the best of their quarterback. And facing 3rd-and-11 with about 90 seconds left, they wasted time. They were more concerned with the Eagles scoring again than trying to cut a chunk of their 24-point deficit.
With Mahomes playing quarterback.
When have you ever seen that?
There’s winning a football game — the ultimate football game — and then there’s scarring a team so badly that it loses its own belief.
The Chiefs possess now what they never desired: an offseason removed from the celebratory spotlight, left to debug the virus of what just happened. That falls on coach Andy Reid, too. He owns part of this, and maybe a lot of it, though same as he owns three Super Bowl rings and two more trips there in the last six seasons.
This team will look different next year. It could potentially look a lot different. Trey Smith, Nick Bolton and Justin Reid are pretty high-profile free agents. We don’t know what decision Travis Kelce will make about his future.
But the most important question hanging over this offseason doesn’t rest with free agency, Kelce or even the left tackle.
It rests with the guy Fangio tested and lived to tell about it.
It rests with the guy who, if you happen to live in Kansas City, you should want to be responsible for the future.
It rests with Mahomes.
