KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The deficit was 14, soon to be 17, and as Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes shook his head and then jogged to the sideline, he thought of a strategy.
On many occasions, Mahomes sits alongside offensive coaches on the bench, where together they analyze the finer points of coverages, pass protections and their potential responses to them.
But Mahomes deviated from that routine Monday night, and instead he walked down the sideline for a chat with five teammates: left tackle Orlando Brown, left guard Joe Thuney, center Creed Humphrey, right guard Nick Allegretti and right tackle Andrew Wylie.
On the previous snap, a third down incompletion, Mahomes had yet again been pressured to throw the pass earlier than he wanted, enough of a disruption to wreck the play.
That prompted the ensuing maneuver, and he had help from tight end Travis Kelce in its execution: A verbal message.
“We’re going to win or lose this game because of ya’ll,” Mahomes told the offensive line. “They’re playing man coverage. We have to attack downfield. But we’re going to have to protect.”
Kelce would chime in: “They want it more than us.”
The Chiefs would score 30 points on their next five drives, an about-face to which Mahomes hours later credited one very specific position group — the offensive line. The Chiefs held on late for a 30-29 victory in the same game they had permitted the Raiders to score the first 17 points.
Add it to the list, right?
Since Mahomes took over as the franchise quarterback in 2018, the Chiefs are 12-9 in games in which they faced a double-digit deficit, a remarkable statistic that has grown beyond the excuse of a small sample size. The rest of the league, by comparison, is 156-873 in identical situations over that same stretch, per ESPN Stats.
How does this keep happening?
We’ve dissected a host of aspects of several of them, from “Let’s go do something special” in a playoff win against Houston to Jet-Chip-Wasp to win a Super Bowl to 13 seconds that will forever live in Chiefs franchise history. (Those 13 seconds, by the way, are relevant this week as the Chiefs host the Bills on Sunday afternoon.)
It would be easy to chalk the collection up to the Chiefs simply being the far superior team, though that doesn’t adequately explain the double-digit deficits in the first place. Or easy to join the Chiefs’ narrative, which is that they just panic less than other teams do.
Both can be true. Both probably are true. But they’re just pieces of the pie. Let’s keep this conversation of the comebacks focused on another piece that we mention less frequently — a piece that is a common denominator in all of them.
Which derives from the two players who are common denominators themselves.
“Trav and Pat just never stop giving energy, whether we’re down like this past weekend or whatever the situation,” Allegretti said. “They are motivators. A lot of fire. A lot of energy. They are super motivational guys. You feed off of it.”
There’s a dichotomy between the approach from two players, though, and it’s like a version of unintended harmony. Kelce blitzes the market with his product; Mahomes prefers the strategically-placed advertisements, often directed at a particular audience.
In back-to-back weeks, the Chiefs have been motivated by the messaging, and they won both games.
It would be a disservice not to take a moment to acknowledge that it would be ideal if the Chiefs could get to a place where they merely benefit from this, not rely on it. They have proven they can win in a street fight, but their quarterback shouldn’t need to remind them they’re in one before they punch back. How about landing the first jab?
That’s a key difference, and the Chiefs have been flirting with the wrong side. You’d like to keep that comeback tool locked in the belt a little more often.
It is, however, a heck of a tool to have at your disposal, and the fact the Chiefs have had it for some time plays into effectiveness. A winning record in games in which they trail by double-digits? Think Kelce and Mahomes aren’t aware of that?
“It’s really special to see how (Mahomes) gets going when things aren’t going well,” quarterbacks coach Matt Nagy said, adding of Monday night, “He had some fire going. And it’s a good fire. That, for me, is where it’s infectious. You feel it. It doesn’t just happen and permeate to the players but (also) to the coaches. He gets all of us going.”
Mahomes has developed a feel for when to push, and more importantly, whom to push and how to push.
There’s an art to it, and it’s not just the words.
It’s the actions. Wide out in the open. And don’t fool yourself — they come out for a reason.
On Monday night, for example, some Chiefs fans and even some of the team’s players were upset that Raiders defensive end Maxx Crosby was not penalized for what ESPN cameras showed to be head-butting Mahomes. Two days later, though, Mahomes shrugged it off and admitted, “I kind of walked to him, so it was probably my own fault.”
Crosby had drawn the ire of several players during the game. He is an intense competitor, smack dab in the middle of confrontations throughout the night. When those same cameras caught Mahomes turning back toward the field and repeatedly shouting, “I’m here!”, well those words were meant for Crosby.
Think he picked him out by coincidence? Come on.
“You have to (do that) sometimes,” Mahomes said. “They were bringing the fight to us. ... We had to bring some energy and show them we’re not going to back down.”
To be clear, when he says show them, he really means show his teammates. If you were donning a Chiefs uniform, how could you have missed it?
That’s the strategy of his motivational tactics. It’s just one example. There are many.
There’s a lasting image in my mind from the first comeback of that 2019 postseason, when the Chiefs erased a 24-0 deficit against the Texans. After the Chiefs finally scored, yet still trailing 17, Mahomes ran about 50 yards in the opposite direction and flapped his arms for the crowd to grow louder.
A message directed toward 76,000 people but meant for 52 others.
That’s the theme to all of this. And there’s a reason it resonates — the source of it.
“If that guy handles himself the right way — we always talk about if his closet’s clean — then he can do that,” head coach Andy Reid said. “He can put the hammer down a little bit on guys, and they’ll respond. They all know he works hard; he’s competitive, smart; so they respect it if he needs to give them a little juice.”
