NEW ORLEANS - Late Saturday night, Patrick Mahomes envisioned another close ending, another chance late in the fourth quarter, another moment that could deepen his legacy. He had already played in four Super Bowls at age 29, and he had come to expect a certain flow to them. He believed Super Bowl LIX and the Kansas City Chiefs’ historic pursuit at a third consecutive title would be decided late.
At their team hotel overlooking the Mississippi River, the Philadelphia Eagles were arriving at their own expectation. Their defensive linemen gathered in a conference room. Defensive line coach Clint Hurtt delivered a message.
“All respect to the Chiefs, but I know who we are and what we’re about,” Hurtt told his players. “And there’s no reason for the game to ever be close.”
Sunday night inside the Superdome, Mahomes’s inevitability collided headlong with a ferocious, profoundly talented defense. His perception of the game - if not himself as a quarterback - would be utterly shaken. The Eagles clobbered the Chiefs, 40-22, and bullied Mahomes into a brand of turnover-streaked, almost helpless football that had been foreign to him.
In a game that could have delivered him an unprecedented achievement, Mahomes suffered the most comprehensive thrashing of his professional career. His offensive line provided him little chance at playing well, but his impatience and imprecision only exacerbated the Chiefs’ struggles. A quarterback of regal poise turned panicky and uncertain. Mahomes’s performance did nothing less than force him - three Super Bowl titles into his career - to take stock of the kind of quarterback he needs to be.
“I take ownership of this loss more than probably any loss in my entire career,” Mahomes said. “I put us in a bad spot.”
The worst margin of defeat of Mahomes’s career remained 24 points, from a 27-3 loss to the Tennessee Titans in Week 7 of 2021. But that owed only to a pair of cosmetic touchdown passes Mahomes threw in the final three minutes on Sunday. He had never been beaten so badly. The Eagles led 24-0 at halftime. They led 40-6 late in the fourth quarter. Mahomes had never been sacked more than five times in a game; the Eagles sacked him six times without needing to blitz. Mahomes threw two first-half interceptions, the first of which Cooper DeJean returned for a game-cracking touchdown midway through the second quarter. He lost a fumble in the fourth, a play even the quarterback who makes anything seem possible had no shot at recovering from.
Early in the week, Mahomes was asked if any game keeps him up at night. “That’s easy,” Mahomes said: The 31-9 Super Bowl loss the Chiefs suffered to Tom Brady and Tampa Bay Buccaneers four years ago, in which Mahomes could not survive a pass-rushing onslaught. That game now has company.
“Both suck,” Mahomes said. “There’s no way around it. Any time you lose a Super Bowl, it’s the worst feeling in the world. It will stick with you the rest of your career.”
In the final seconds of the game, teammates and coaches consoled Mahomes. He threw his arm around defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, looking at the field with a 1,000-yard stare. He walked to midfield after the final kneel down, congratulated MVP Jalen Hurts with a handshake and navigated a mass of photographers. For nearly 11 minutes at a news conference, he answered questions with poise and grace, repeatedly crediting the Eagles and accepting full blame.
“The turnovers hurt, and I take all the blame for that,” Mahomes said. “Those early turnovers swing the momentum of the game. They scored a touchdown on one, and then they got a touchdown immediately after. That’s 14 points that I gave them.”
The Eagles bewildered Mahomes with a simple game plan. They used no “unscouted” tactics or scheme, Chiefs center Creed Humphrey said - everything they did Sunday night was what they had done before. Early in the two-week preparation, defensive coordinator Vic Fangio determined he would not adjust to his opponent or the magnitude of the Super Bowl.
“The way we play is the way we play our best,” Fangio said. “It’s just the style that fits our team the best. That’s how I wanted to start the game. When we started off so good, I just stayed with it.”
Fangio had hovered over Mahomes’s career well before Sunday night, indirectly dictating his evolution from gunslinger to surgeon. Fangio specialized in the shell-like defenses with two deep safeties that first stymied Mahomes when he seemed unstoppable early in his career, and that style of defense spread across the league and promoted a swell of short passing. As others copied Fangio, Mahomes adjusted by becoming a maestro of checkdowns and screen passes. The Fangio-Mahomes chess match had influenced the entire league and turned Mahomes, by this season, into a Brady-like distributor who could also conjure magic with scrambles.
Fangio stuck with his tenets Sunday night. He repeatedly told his players to “stop the second play” - keep Mahomes corralled in the pocket and don’t let him make magic on the run. He planned to blitz as little as possible, keeping seven defenders in constantly shifting coverage designs.
“Mahomes does very well against pressure, adding extra rushers,” Fangio said. “So I was hoping we could play him without having to do that.”
The Chiefs’ primary vulnerability all season, as they eked out dramatic victories, was their offensive line. Late in the year, they resorted to moving Joe Thuney from left guard to left tackle and inserting undrafted Mike Caliendo in Thuney’s spot. The Eagles’ defensive line kicked their teeth in.
From the Chiefs’ first drives, Mahomes was hesitant. The unrelenting pass rush harried him. The seven players in coverage forced him to throw through a dense forest of limbs. He could not conjure his usual improvisational flair, hemmed in by four pass rushers and unable to find uncovered receivers.
“In order to make a team blitz, you need to be able to beat what they’re showing,” Mahomes said.
The Eagles did not blitz once in the first half and still pressured Mahomes on 47 percent of his dropbacks. Fangio called only one blitz in the second half, when the outcome had already been decided.
Mahomes threw for 33 yards in the first half, the fewest in a championship game since Rex Grossman had 32 in the first half in Super Bowl XLI. His 10.7 quarterback rating in the first half was the third-worst of any quarterback in any game this season.
“He’s a human being, man,” Chiefs wideout DeAndre Hopkins said. “I guess the world got to see that.”
Mahomes’s first interception came when he tried to squeeze a pass into a nonexistent window to Hopkins. DeJean stepped in front of it and weaved into the end zone. Late in the first half, Josh Sweat - who also had 2.5 sacks - shoved Thuney into Mahomes as he released a pass. The ball fluttered into the diving hands of linebacker Zack Baun. Mahomes allowed that he had been bumped, but he would not accept a reprieve. “Got to find a way to make the throw,” Mahomes said.
To Mahomes, both interceptions had been reversions to an early version of himself, the quarterback who let deep shells bait him into trying for long passes when the scheme demanded disciplined, shorter gains.
“Sometimes, I get where I want to make a big play to spark us,” Mahomes said. “That’s something I’ve dealt with my entire career. If I don’t show that I will take what’s there in the game, the defense is going to stay in the coverages they’re in. They were going to make me be a fundamental quarterback from the pocket and take what’s there. I still have to get better at it.”
Mahomes reasserted his belief as he assessed his entire season. The Chiefs went 15-1 in games he started in the regular season and entered the Super Bowl as a favorite. And yet, Mahomes detected deficiencies that he already has plans to address.
“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 they were playing,” Mahomes said. “That’s the beauty of football. You never can be satisfied with just going out there and playing and thinking you’re going to have success year in, year out. These defenses are going to continue to get better, and so I have to get better.”
Not every Kansas City player shared Mahomes’s grace. While answering a question about what he would take away from the loss, Hopkins brought up the officiating unprompted and assailed the popular notion - deflated by the outcome, until Hopkins broached it - that Kansas City had benefited from favorable calls.
“I saw a lot of things in the media about the refs, but what are you all going to say now about the refs and us now?” Hopkins said. “There was a lot of touchy calls. Are you going to report that? Are you going to talk about the refs now? Y’all better.”
He then stood and left.
Mahomes lost both a game and ground to the man in the Fox broadcast booth. Only 29, Mahomes seems likely to have more chances to add to his three Super Bowl titles and chase Brady’s seven. But it is far from inevitable. During a nine-year swath in the middle of his career, Brady reached two Super Bowls and won none. Mahomes has so far kept Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen at arm’s length, but they remain dangerous obstacles in his path to the Super Bowl. The Eagles show few signs of fading. Travis Kelce, Mahomes’s favorite target, mustered four catches for 39 yards and, at 35, could ponder retirement.
“He knows he still has a lot of football left in him,” Mahomes said. “You can see he always makes plays in the biggest moments. But it’s if he wants to put in that grind. I know he still has love for the game. He’ll get to spend some time with his family and make that decision on his own.”
Once his news conference ended, Mahomes stood from the table and grabbed a red hoodie from under the table. “Appreciate you,” he told a Kansas City reporter. He walked two steps the wrong direction, then turned around and ducked through a curtain to meet a waiting golf cart.
Mahomes hopped into the middle row next to a Chiefs security guard. He checked a phone and saw a lock screen dense with messages. Defensive teammates George Karlaftis and Trent McDuffie rode in the row behind him. Baun, one of the defenders who had intercepted him hours earlier, walked past, still in full shoulder pads.
Mahomes would dress quickly in the locker room and exit the Super Bowl with the hoodie pulled over his head. First, as the golf cart veered down the concrete hallway, Mahomes could look down a tunnel to his right. He could see a field covered with green and white confetti, full of players experiencing an incomparable feeling that he knew well and, for one startling night, felt so far away.