In his five full seasons as an NFL starting quarterback, Patrick Lavon Mahomes II has proven just about everything a young quarterback can prove in the NFL. He has one AP Most Valuable Player award, and the odds are pretty good that he’s about to pick up his second. He has one Super Bowl ring, and the odds are pretty good that he’s about to pick up his second. He has torched most NFL defenses to a thermonuclear degree, and any level of adversity he’s faced has usually been beaten back at some point by Mahomes’ rare athletic gifts and superb football acumen.
Sunday’s AFC Championship game was a very different story. It takes a while for quarterbacks to develop situations in which opponents just have their number, and Mahomes had developed one in the Cincinnati Bengals, and defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo. Mahomes’ previous three games against the Bengals — all Chiefs losses — had been nightmare fuel for Mahomes, especially in the second halves and overtimes of those games.
In those three losses, through the second halves and overtime (this included last year’s AFC Championship game), Mahomes had completed 25 passes on 44 attempts for 503 yards, no touchdowns, two interceptions, and a passer rating of 54.5. In the second half of this game, with his body and his receiver corps falling apart, Mahomes completed 16 of 24 passes for 161 yards, a touchdown, no picks, and a passer rating of 99.5.
It was a remarkable performance to exorcise those former demons, and big plays were all over the place. Perhaps the most important one that might slip under the radar was this 11-yard completion to receiver Mecole Hardman with 9:10 left in the third quarter. The Bengals had just tied the game at 13 with Joe Burrow’s amazing touchdown pass to Tee Higgins…
BURROW TO HIGGINS 🎯
TIE GAME IN KC 📈
(via @Bengals)pic.twitter.com/I26af7ouEM
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) January 30, 2023
…and now, Mahomes had third-and-4 from his own 29-yard line against that same tricky opponent who had scored the last 10 points in the game.
Mahomes’ response was to roll to his left against yet another of Anarumo’s defensive packages in which the Bengals got pressure with three or four (four in this case), and this case, he had linebacker Germaine Pratt bearing down on him. With that high ankle sprain, throwing against his own momentum, Mahomes threw this dart to Hardman, with three defenders converging on his receiver in Cover-2.
Mahomes’ 19-yard touchdown pass to Marquez Valdes-Scantling at the end of that drive with 4:21 left in the third quarter was overall his most impressive, and it wasn’t just because Mahomes made a perfect timing and velocity throw to Valdes-Scantling. It was also because Mahomes showed top-tier pocket movement — the ability to shift inside the pocket and extend the play that way.
I mean, what are you supposed to do against this?
On that same sprained ankle, Mahomes attempted five passes outside the pocket to his right, and he completed all five for 58 yards. All five throws came in the first half, when it appeared that whatever Mahomes had taken to manage the pain was more prevalent in his body. The first four throws were against different kinds of zone coverage. No shot plays; just Mahomes going full Steph Curry and exploiting defensive voids.
Then, the fifth such throw — this time, the Bengals went with Cover-0 from their own 14-yard line with 3:59 left in the first half. If you’re going to throw Cover-0 at Mahomes, whether you’re blitzing or mush-rushing behind it, Mahomes is going to roll around and play “Find the Huckleberry” with Travis Kelce. In this case, the Huckleberry was safety Jessie Bates, who was clearly trying to communicate with safety Vonn Bell pre-snap, but had to follow Kelce up the chute in single coverage.
Whoops.
Even the Chiefs’ final offensive play — Mahomes’ five-yard scramble to set up Harrison Butker’s game-winning 45-yard field goal, accentuated as it was by Joseph Ossai pushing Mahomes when he was already out of bounds and adding 15 yards to the Chiefs’ endeavors — was a case of emptying the quiver with everything he had left from a physical perspective.
“I didn’t expect to be able to run very much, just from the way it felt,” Mahomes said after the game. “I just battled through. I was able to do enough on that last play. I knew I was going to do whatever I could to get us in field goal range.”
It is not recency boas to suggest that this was the best game of Patrick Mahomes’ NFL career. You can point to other performances, but given the situation, opponent, and injury adversity, this may have been the one game in which Mahomes proved beyond all doubt that he is, indeed, him.
