When You Have Patrick Mahomes, You Have Everything

To play in the third Super Bowl of Patrick Mahomes’ five years of starting at quarterback, the Kansas City Chiefs needed a lot to happen that was not strictly in their future Hall of Fame QB’s control. They needed a big-time effort from an athletic trainer and a physical therapist to even get Mahomes on the field in Sunday’s AFC Championship against the Cincinnati Bengals. They needed Mahomes’ counterpart, Joe Burrow, to be a bit sluggish behind an offensive line that couldn’t really block the Chiefs’ front. They needed to get the better end of a handful of iffy and non-calls as the game wore on. They needed Bengals edge defender Joseph Ossai to get just a hair too aggressive as Mahomes scurried to the sideline on the last offensive snap of the game, giving him a late push that put Mahomes on the ground and the Chiefs in field goal range in a tied game. They needed Harrison Butker to flush the ensuing 45-yard kick to clinch a 23–20 win.

The Chiefs live a charmed existence, and these things go right for them more often than they don’t. Mahomes does not do it all. He isn’t even the only constant. His head coach (Andy Reid), offensive coordinator (Eric Bieniemy), and all-world tight end (Travis Kelce) have been on the same ride with him.

But Mahomes is the Chiefs’ load-bearing wall. Even when he isn’t putting the franchise over the top, he is the reason K.C. is in these positions every season, with five championship-weekend appearances in his five starting years. Mahomes has become the NFL’s only inevitable player, the guy who is impossible to get rid of without something absurd happening in the last few weeks of the playoffs. No NFL QB can snap his fingers and tear down the rest of the league every January—even Tom Brady has ended his seasons with a loss about twice as often as with a win—but Mahomes is now both the league’s most terrifying player and the guy who requires the most to dislodge. Sunday was a good illustration. By rights, the Chiefs should’ve been cooked for several reasons. But they have Mahomes, and nobody else does, and Mahomes’ power is that he makes so many other things, even important things, feel extraneous.

The final play will mostly be remembered for the late hit and the flag that came in a few beats later:

But it was Mahomes who made it possible. The late hit never happens if the Bengals have a defender assigned to watch Mahomes and take away the run. But the Bengals can’t have a QB spy, because Kelce demands a double-team in the middle of the field, and too many receivers need to be covered. The Bengals can’t pull a deep safety in to watch Mahomes’ legs, because they know if they do that, he’ll effortlessly lob a ball over some poor cornerback’s head for what will probably be a game-winning touchdown. Playing against Mahomes, when he and the Chiefs are fully operational, is an exercise in picking poisons.

Mahomes and the Chiefs weren’t fully operational in this game. He suffered a high ankle sprain the week before. He looked practically infirm running around all evening. He was on one leg that ranged between good and good-ish. (Who knows, at this time of the year?) Three of his best receivers were on the injury report all week and limited or out from practice before the game. The Bengals’ defense had been swinging a big stick. Given all that, Mahomes had far from his best stuff. But what that looks like for this particular QB is as follows: 29 completions on 43 attempts for 326 yards, two touchdowns, and no interceptions. His night had more warts than that line showed: The Bengals recorded five sacks, and on one of them, an untouched Mahomes lost the ball in his windup and gave Cincinnati the ball. But the line also doesn’t show the injuries. His official 8 rushing yards on three attempts don’t include the decisive 15 that set up Butker from 45 yards instead of what would’ve been around 60.

Some year in the future, Butker or whoever is kicking for the Chiefs might miss that last field goal. Some year, the game might go to overtime. The Chiefs have won overtime coin tosses and gone on to win, and they have lost overtime coin tosses and gone on to lose. Having Mahomes does not promise that things will go well at the margins. It promises that the Chiefs will get to the margins where the biggest games are won and lost. He’s a one-man guarantor—not of endless Lombardi Trophies, but endless opportunity. He will win more Super Bowls the same way that a major league batter will get more hits. It’s just averages.

There’s very little within the realm of likelihood that could make a Mahomes team not be right in the mix for the foreseeable future. The Chiefs have fielded some bad and occasionally horrendous defenses over the years. It hasn’t mattered, because they have had Mahomes. They lost Tyreek Hill, maybe the best receiver in the NFL, after last season. Hill had one of his best seasons ever with the Miami Dolphins. The Chiefs somehow didn’t really miss him, because they have Mahomes. Bieniemy, his offensive coordinator, could leave for another job pretty much any time. Bieniemy is one of the top offensive minds in football, but losing him will not really bother the Chiefs, because they have Mahomes. Even for teams with very good quarterbacks, such obstacles can be an expressway to mediocrity or devastation. But his singular ability to generate scoring no matter the obstacles around him—or seemingly those within his own body—are what make him such a unique threat in the NFL. As he showed on the schoolyard-style play that ended with Ossai shoving him too late, Mahomes will tend to just figure it out. Year after year, and for the foreseeable future, that puts the Chiefs never further than a lucky break or two from the pinnacle.

That sheen of unavoidability doesn’t hold forever. Brady’s last pass as a New England Patriot, as a 42-year-old, was intercepted and run back for a touchdown in the Wild Card round of the playoffs. Aaron Rodgers is 39 and just missed the playoffs to cap a lousy season. Shit happens, and age definitely happens. But it will take a lot of shit and a lot of years for Mahomes, 27, to stop being who he is right now. For many years to come, the predominant Mahomes experience for opposing teams will be one of either outright hopelessness when facing him or disbelief that he wriggled off a hook, like he did against the Buffalo Bills in 2021’s Divisional Round and like he did against the Bengals on Sunday. Sometimes, it will be both. Mahomes is just athletic enough, just creative enough, and just scary enough as a runner to have both found the edge against the Bengals on Sunday’s last play and drawn the late hit from Ossai.

Mahomes’ third of what will eventually be many Super Bowl appearances comes in two weeks against the Philadelphia Eagles. The Chiefs opened as 1-point favorites before shifting at most sportsbooks to 2-point underdogs. By most rights, they should be a bigger underdog than that. The Eagles are a wrecking crew, and they would have done better than their 14–3 record had they been healthier and more motivated at the end of a regular season in which they had nearly locked up the NFC’s top seed by the final weeks. They have maybe the best line play in the NFL on both offense and defense. They have Jalen Hurts, one of the only QBs in modern NFL history who can be either an excellent downfield passer or a bona fide between-the-tackles runner depending on the play call. They have two of the best receivers alive in A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith. They have four defenders with double-digit sack totals. They lack even mild weaknesses, and their key contributors are much, much healthier than the Chiefs’ have been.

This Super Bowl could be a mismatch, given the Eagles’ destructiveness and the Chiefs’ medical problems. But it almost certainly will not be, and the Chiefs will have a perfectly good chance to find more Super Bowl rings in their couch cushions late in the second half. The Eagles have more weapons than most teams could ever imagine. They just don’t have Mahomes. And a football team that doesn’t have Patrick Mahomes cannot be a football team that has everything.