PHOENIX — When the Chiefs beat Cincinnati in the AFC Championship Game last month to reach their third Super Bowl in four seasons, Patrick Mahomes reflected on having “dealt with failure” since a meteoric rise to winning league MVP in his first season as a starter and becoming Super Bowl MVP a year later.
Who knew that stuff didn’t happen every year?
“I thought that (was always) just kind of how it went,” he said after the 23-20 victory over the Bengals.
Turns out that’s still just kind of how it goes for Mahomes, who on Thursday night at the NFL Honors Show at Symphony Hall was named The Associated Press NFL MVP for the second time in his five years at the helm of the Chiefs.
Winning it this time, though, stood for something more in a few ways … with the full context still to be determined on Sunday.
Most obviously, this one confers a different sort of significance to Mahomes’ profile — even if we don’t need awards to validate the brilliance we are privileged to see week-in and week-out from the phenomenon teammate Travis Kelce quite aptly called “the Houdini of our era.”
“I love watching him play,” Tom Brady said after the Chiefs beat the Bucs, 41-31.
And, really, who doesn’t?
Mahomes now is one of just 10 NFL players to have won multiple MVP awards. Ahead of the 27-year-old Mahomes are only Peyton Manning (five), Aaron Rodgers (four) and Brady, Jim Brown, Brett Favre and Johnny Unitas (three apiece).
He’s tied with Joe Montana, Steve Young and Kurt Warner — the last man to win MVP and follow it up with a Super Bowl victory and who perhaps provided some good vibes by presenting the award Thursday.
With the Chiefs preparing to play the Eagles in Super Bowl LVII on Sunday, Mahomes was not in attendance and accepted the award with a video thanking his family, the organization, coaches and teammates.
Safe to say his absence reflected his sense of propriety ... and urgency about the higher meaning of the game ahead for the team, city and even himself.
Beyond the fact that this election by 48 of 50 voters elevates Mahomes further among greats of the game with presumably years left to distinguish himself, there was something else substantial entwined with this one.
In what had appeared could be a season of transition and flux in the wake of the Tyreek Hill trade, Mahomes stoked the Chiefs to league-bests of 29.2 points and 413.6 yards a game in the regular season and threw for a career-best 5,250 yards.
With virtually an entirely new cast of wide receivers.
While Kelce, a tight end who led the team with 110 catches, is the heart of the pass offense and running back Jerick McKinnon (56 receptions) had a vital role, Mahomes faced a massive adjustment otherwise.
Of the 196 passes the Chiefs completed to wide receivers during the regular season, 171 went to players who joined the team since last season.
Most of whom, it should be noted, got a head start on the process because of the initiative the insatiably competitive Mahomes took to host an informal receivers camp back home in Texas in the offseason.
But it wasn’t just that the group was different.
It was that it had different skill sets and flourishes that the ever-evolving Mahomes contoured himself to with newfound patience to merely take what the defense was allowing more than he had in the past.
So he completed a career-high 67.1%of his passes, with the longest pass of the season going 67 yards — the shortest long, so to speak, in his five years as a starter.
And only one of his NFL-leading 41 touchdown passes went more than 20 yards in the air, according to research by CBS Sports, 10 fewer than his average over the previous four seasons.
Put another way, Mahomes’ stunning career top-25 highlight reel likely will feature few plays from this more workmanlike season other than, say, the berserk 2-yard touchdown pass to Clyde Edwards-Helaire in Tampa, the no-look flip to McKinnon in Denver and the run on a wounded ankle to set up the game-winning field goal in the AFC Championship Game.
Not to mention whatever he might uncork on Sunday.
It all makes for an illustration of how Mahomes continues to adapt and grow on and off the field since he burst on the scene as MVP — and, better yet, what makes him an MVP for Kansas City itself.
Since then, Mahomes has become a husband and father of two and was the Chiefs nominee for the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year Award that went to Dallas quarterback Dak Prescott.
Since then, he’s invested in the Royals and Sporting KC and, most recently, the KC Current of the National Women’s Soccer League while becoming a global superstar.
In an interview with Chiefs chairman and CEO Clark Hunt earlier this week, Hunt thought about Mahomes in the context of another megastar the family followed closely because of his father’s role as a founding investor in the Chicago Bulls.
“When you sit around and start thinking about, ‘OK, who has been like Patrick Mahomes historically as a pro athlete, it’s a very short list,” Hunt said. “And because of our family’s experience with the Bulls, Michael Jordan’s always the first one that comes to mind for me.”
And … he’s really all yours, Kansas City, unspoiled and burning for more.
Even as this will further burnish his international appeal, Mahomes retains a special brand here because of not just his winning game but his winning ways.
He’s sensational but gritty, confident but not cocky, the best player on earth yet one of the guys.
And appreciative of the city, the Chiefs and his mind-meld with coach Andy Reid.
So on a night when he became one of the most-decorated players in NFL history in his still-brief career, you can know that winning Sunday matters a lot more to him than winning Thursday did.
Feeling that way, of course, is much of why he was recognized Thursday night after having “dealt with failure” the last two years … and why he could only enjoy true reconciliation with that feeling on Sunday.
