The Chiefs wonder why you can't win 'em all

Patrick Mahomes and the champs will go for a third straight Super Bowl win.

Samaje Perine

They don’t play the Pro Bowl anymore. They’ve turned it into a glorified 3-legged race and apple-bobbing contest and housed it in Orlando, even though it’s supposed to be a reward. But they still pick teams, and players still put “3-time Pro Bowler” on their resumes. And there are limits at every position. For instance, there are only three AFC quarterbacks. This year they are Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson and Joe Burrow. Patrick Mahomes was excluded. It’s OK. Pulling flags isn’t his thing.

For the first time in a starting career that began in 2018, Mahomes did not pass for 4,000 yards. His 26 touchdown passes tied a career low. He was sacked a career-high 36 times and his 6.8-yards-per-attempt was also a career low. Fantasy players ran from Mahomes as if he were a ghoul. The pro football world waited impatiently for all these short numbers to translate into losing. Instead Kansas City won 15 of 16 games in which Mahomes played, and for the fifth time in his seven seasons he will quarterback the Chiefs in a Super Bowl, and his object is to win it for the third consecutive time, which no other team has done.

Kansas City topped Buffalo for the AFC Championship on Sunday in Arrowhead Stadium, 32-29. Mahomes ran for two touchdowns and passed for another, and hit 18 of 26 passes for 245 yards. He took the Chiefs downfield for Harrison Butker’s winning field goal, which meant that Kansas City has now won 17 conseutive games decided by eight or fewer points. It also has eliminated Buffalo for the fifth time in Mahomes’ tenure. The only real parallel to KC-Buffalo, or really KC-Anybody, is Hamilton Burger’s inability to beat Perry Mason in the courtroom. If you’re old enough to remember that, you can appreciate just what the Chiefs are doing.

It’s not like Mahomes plays immortal football. He even had a turnover Sunday for the first time since Nov. 18, and after his second touchdown he unofficially delivered the worst spike in the history of end zones. But when the time comes for definition, it is always the other team that can’t catch a fourth-down pass, or can’t convert a fourth-and-one, or gets a field goal blocked, or kicks it wide right, or commits a holding penalty when the Chiefs are facing a third-and-urgent. It is never the Chiefs. That only comes from years of repetitive winning.

With 15 starters still around from two years ago, the last time the Chiefs beat Philadelphia in a Super Bowl, this franchise overflows with trust. Andy Reid’s offense will find something in its archives that still works. Steve Spagnuolo’s defense will discover yet another nugget just when you think he’s exhausted all his 11-man permutations. Mahomes will ignore the hot breath around him, use the microprocessors inside his head, and make the best decision. And every new player, including the rookies, joins up.

Kansas City is on the verge of doing something even New England couldn’t do, not that it will be easy against an Eagles team that walloped Washington and, unlike two years ago, has Saquon Barkley. But if it happens, the begrudgers will have to find something else besides officiating conspiracies. Maybe by then they’ll explain why the NFL would allow its New York and Chicago teams to be so awful and would make sure Kansas City, which is a smaller media market than Hartford or Salt Lake City, wins everything. Or maybe Mahomes doesn’t have the right birth certificate.

Reid, who won its 301st game Sunday and will coach in his sixth Super Bowl, said later that “one inch decided it,” referring to Josh Allen’s failure to pick up a fourth-and-one with the score tied. Mahomes was breaking the plane, on the other end, five plays later.

Others would point to a catch by rookie Xavier Worthy that was oddly upheld by replay, preceding Mahomes’ touchdown that put the Chiefs up, 21-10. And there was widespread wonder over the way Buffalo offensive coordinator Joe Brady sheathed James Cook in the late going, after Cook had run four times for 40 yards on a go-ahead drive. Cook did not get the ball in the drive that ended with Dalton Kincaid failing to make a hero catch on Allen’s hassled, fourth-down pass with 1:54 left.

That play, and another that followed, encapsulates the way the Chiefs attack the biggest moments, the confidence that’gets built-in through accumulated Januarys.

Buffalo had fourth-and-five on its own 47, needing maybe 23 yards to give Tyler Bass a plausible shot at a game-tying kick. Some coaches would have zoned it up and made sure everything was tight downfield. Instead, Spagnuolo overloaded his left side and sent safety Justin Reid on a blitz alongside George Karlaftis. They both got close enough to force Allen’s floating throw, which amazingly got to Kincaid and would have prolonged the drive had Kincaid caught it.

That returned the ball to Kansas City but it didn’t settle anything. Remember, there were 31 points scored in the last two minutes of regulation and overtime when the Chiefs beat Buffalo in 2021. With 1:35 left on Buffalo’s 35, Mahomes had a third-and-nine. Failure to convert would give Reid a ticklish choice: Try the long field goal and risk bad field position, or punt?

Reid precluded that by fishing out a play from his battered file cabinet. He stationed a 3-man cluster to the left and had all three receivers sprint toward the middle of the field. Then Samaje Perine, who had not touched the ball once and had 20 carries and 28 catches during the season, slipped out of the backfield and into space. Perine was linebacker Terrel Bernard’s man, but Bernard was suddenly in the midst of Grand Central Station congestion, thanks to the Chiefs’ receivers, and couldn’t get there until Perine had gotten the first down and printed the boarding passes to New Orleans.

Player procurement is critical. Kansas City traded up to draft Mahomes and Worthy, dealing with Buffalo both times. JuJu Smith-Schuster and Kareem Hunt and Hollywood Brown pushed their own rewind buttons and made plays on Sunday. Almost everyone on the roster has a distinct function, thanks to the special teams tradition established by Reid and Dave Toth. Worthy’s polarizing catch blocked the memory of how that got started, a 41-yard punt return by Nikko Remigio. He was undrafted, out of Fresno State via Cal, in 2023 and was on injured reserve when the Chiefs won last year’s Super Bowl. The Chiefs only have 53 players available each Sunday and only dress 48, compliant with league rules, but the great teams always seem like a limitless horde.

The NFC game Sunday was less dramatic and more bizarre, particularly with Washington’s Frankie Luvu dive-bombing Philadelphia’s Brotherly Shove on the goal line. The Commanders, heretofore to be known as The Worst Nickname In Sports Other Than Guardians, had three ridiculous fumbles that the Eagles turned into touchdowns, and then Philadelphia did the same thing with an interception. Saquon Barkley couldn’t be allowed to go coast-to-coast, and then he took his first carry 60 yards to six points. Jalen Hurts was healthy enough to run for a score and find DeVonta Smith and A.J. Brown 13 times in 16 passes. It became a 55-23 debacle on the scoreboard, but it actually swung on the fumbles and Vic Fangio’s defense, which bottled up Jayden Daniels on first down and largely took away his wide receivers. All respect to the TWNISOTG, but America would have preferred Detroit-Philadelphia.

The Chiefs don’t trip over the furniture like the Lions did. They don’t skip over the details like Washington did. They don’t give the opponent anything except the chance to get the hiccups. They show up, Pro Bowl excluded.