Before Patrick Mahomes could wrap his press conference late Sunday evening, after a Super Bowl performance that will likely go down as one of the worst games of his entire Hall of Fame–caliber career, he was asked one final question. “When you visualized this game, did you envision it coming down to you needing to make a play?” a reporter from Kansas City asked. Mahomes frowned, then took a breath.
“I expected that,” he said, “because that’s how most games happen.”
Most of us expected that, too, because if we’re being honest, it was nearly impossible to envision this—Mahomes, the three-time Super Bowl MVP, who has saved the Chiefs time after time with his late-game heroics, particularly this season as they won 12-one score games, being the reason the Chiefs failed to achieve a historic Super Bowl three-peat. But not only did the Chiefs lose Super Bowl LIX to the Philadelphia Eagles, they got blown out, 40-22, in a game that wasn’t actually as close as that 18-point margin might make it appear when we look back at this game years from now.
The Chiefs trailed 24-0 at halftime, a deficit that ballooned to 34-0 late in the third quarter. Mahomes threw two interceptions in the second quarter—one was returned for a score, and the other led directly to another Eagles touchdown. He later lost a fumble deep in Kansas City territory, all but ending what little hope the Chiefs had for a fourth-quarter rally. It was his first three-turnover game ever in the playoffs. He was also sacked six times—the most in any of the 133 games he’s started for the Chiefs. He finished the game with 257 passing yards (109 of which came in the fourth quarter) and three passing touchdowns.
“I take ownership of this loss probably more than any loss of my entire career,” Mahomes said. “I put us in a bad spot.”
This isn’t simply Mahomes taking accountability for the loss as a team leader. The numbers back it up: It was tied for his worst performance by expected points added (EPA) per play in his career, and it was his worst performance as a scrambler (as measured by EPA/scramble) ever in the playoffs—the only time in 21 postseason games when he's had a negative EPA on scrambles.
“There are things I have to get better at, and they kind of showed today on the biggest stage,” Mahomes said.
A few days earlier here in New Orleans, Mahomes stood behind a different interview podium, asked if there’s been a loss in his career that “keeps him up at night.” He doesn’t really have many to choose from. Maybe his first AFC championship game loss to the Patriots, or a loss in the conference title game to the Bengals three years ago. But he had a quick response: Kansas City’s Super Bowl loss to the Buccaneers four years ago.
Until Sunday night against Philadelphia, that game was an outlier—a 31-9 loss that was largely the result of a beat-up Kansas City offensive line that simply couldn’t hold up against a ferocious pass rush. In that game, Mahomes seemed like the Chiefs’ only hope, scrambling for his life, trying desperately to make anything happen. That loss in Tampa seemed to mark the end of the first era of Chiefs football with Mahomes.
The next season, defenses caught up to the Chiefs’ high-octane offense, using two-high safety shells to put a lid on Kansas City’s explosive downfield game. In the 2022 offseason, the Chiefs traded their speedy no. 1 receiver, Tyreek Hill, to the Dolphins as their offensive evolution continued. And Mahomes and the Chiefs eventually figured it out: If defenses were going to keep two safeties deep, he’d become a more patient and diligent underneath passer. He’d scramble when teams gave up running lanes. He’d check the ball down. It has been, well, boring, but it has worked. Mahomes still often plays the hero, but more often than not during the last few seasons, his team has won not in specular and eye-popping fashion, but by getting just enough Mahomes magic (and maybe some Tay Voodoo) to squeak by. And then once they got to the playoffs, Mahomes always seemed to know how to turn it on.
So of course he envisioned a close game here in New Orleans where he’d scramble to pick up the first down to set up a game-winning touchdown, or find Travis Kelce in space for the critical third-down conversion, or he’d hit Xavier Worthy on a deep throw to break open a close game. Of course he thought the Chiefs would adjust against the NFL’s no. 1 defense, because they’ve already found a way to adapt to adversity before.
Instead, one bad play snowballed into another and another for Mahomes and the Chiefs. In a particularly disastrous series of three possessions in the second quarter, Mahomes was sacked three times and picked off twice. Those three drives, with seven total plays, resulted in negative-12 yards for Kansas City, and essentially 14 points for Philadelphia. And never once during those series did it feel like Mahomes was going to be able to solve what was going wrong. The Eagles bottled up his running lanes when they collapsed the pocket, and blanketed the Chiefs receivers downfield, leaving Mahomes with few good options.
“I can’t make bad plays worse,” Mahomes said. “I think that’s something you saw today. There are times when guys aren’t open, I need to throw the ball away or check it down and let other guys make plays happen. Sometimes I get where I want to make a big play to kind of spark us—that’s something I’ve dealt with my entire career. … They were going to make me be a fundamental quarterback from the pocket and take what’s there, and that’s stuff I have to get better at.”
Mahomes was more vulnerable sitting at that podium Sunday night than I’ve seen him as he’s given his MVP press conferences after the Chiefs’ last two Super Bowl wins. Maybe the nature of this loss and the magnitude of the blowout enabled him to get a head start on reflection about what went wrong, and his role in it. He’s experienced this type of heartbreak before, and while he already knows he’ll never get over it, there is a way forward.
“We have a young football team, and a lot of these guys, it’s their first time experiencing defeat in a season. How can you get better? How can you not be satisfied with just getting here, and take your game to the next level?” Mahomes said. “That starts with me, and the leaders on this team. It will feed through the entire team and hopefully we can come back next season and put up a better effort.”
If there’s any consolation for Chiefs fans Sunday night, it’s that Mahomes knows how to do that. The next evolution probably won’t be easy, and the Chiefs have plenty of questions to answer in the coming weeks: about Travis Kelce’s future, about how to once again try to fortify the offensive line, about how to create explosive passing plays. But heartbreak kicked off this chapter of the Chiefs dynasty, so maybe it can happen again.
“These will be the two losses that motivate me to be even better the rest of my career. You only get so few of these, and you have to capitalize on these,” Mahomes said. “They hurt probably more than the wins feel good.”
After Mahomes answered his final question, he stepped off the podium and slipped through a set of black curtains and climbed into a waiting golf cart. He sat awkwardly in the middle row, as the driver maneuvered the cart through a 180-degree turn, and then turned on a siren to try to clear a path. They drove past Eagles linebacker Zack Baun—one of the two players who intercepted Mahomes on Sunday—who was making his way to his own postgame news conference, and beeped as they passed the celebrating family members of Eagles players. The zoomed past a pack of Labrador retrievers, who were sleeping on the floor of the hallway, finally getting a break. When the golf cart reached the Chiefs’ locker room, Mahomes hopped off and was handed a towel as he went inside, emerging a few minutes later with a red hoodie pulled over his head. And then he was gone, stepping into an NFL world in which, for the first time in years, he wasn’t the champion.
