All Hail the King
Patrick Mahomes claimed another victim. Bad news for the NFL, too: He's not close to finished yet.
The cruelest competitors in sports paralyze their adversaries. They serve as lurking, malevolent shadows around the corner bound to render your calculated plans useless. It does not matter if you’ve built a super team. Or how many hours were spent agonizing over X’s and O’s. Or even what the scoreboard says.
We remember the final snapshots. Michael Jordan’s iconic step-back jumper in Salt Lake City and Tiger Woods’ fist pump at Augusta and Muhammad Ali sneering over Sonny Liston. But it’s everything that precedes these timeless moments that’s most diabolical. Only a select few athletes are capable of crawling inside the psyche of their opposition and waging mental warfare.
So, let’s begin with the latest victim. Kyle Shanahan is a man who does not lack self-belief. This son of a Super Bowl champ helped shape modern offensive football as we know it. His large ego is warranted. And yet? When Super Bowl LVIII headed to overtime? Shanahan became the smallest person at Allegiant Stadium by incorrectly choosing to take the ball under the NFL’s new overtime rules and then kicking a field goal on fourth and 4 from the Chiefs 9.
He coached scared and confused because that’s what happens to everyone in the Patrick Mahomes Show.
This is a quarterback who renders the sport’s best and brightest figures nothing but characters playing bit roles. One mistake is all he needs. One door that’s left an inch open. Shanahan isn’t alone, and this is exactly why the best comparison for Mahomes is His Airness. Jordan’s six-title reign over the NBA was more of a suffocating chokehold. He vanquished players and coaches who could’ve been legendary in their own right, single-handedly authoring their biographies with a level of ruthlessness we’re now seeing from Mahomes in real time.
Moments after Super Bowl Ring No. 3 — a 25-22 overtime triumph over the San Francisco 49ers — Mahomes swiftly assured the world his Kansas City Chiefs weren’t close to done in his on-field interview.
Believe him.
The NFL is full of coaches and players who simply picked the wrong era to exist.
Here’s a sad reality: There’s a very good chance that nobody outside the nerdiest of football nerds remembers Shanahan as a man who truly innovated the sport. Teams across the NFL have copied his concepts. He’s been the tip of schematic spear. But until he wins it all — fair or not — he’s the Super Bowl Choker. He’s the Falcons offensive coordinator who blew a 28-3 lead to Tom Brady and the New England Patriots, the 49ers head coach who blew a 10-point lead with 6 ½ minutes left in one Super Bowl and, now, the guy who bungled the NFL’s new postseason overtime rule. Multiple 49ers players said afterward they didn’t even know that each team was guaranteed a possession, while Shanahan claimed he took the ball first to ensure the 49ers had it third in what’d then be a sudden-death scenario.
A bad decision.
There’s no guarantee you get the ball back for that third drive. Unlike the 49ers, these Chiefs were fully versed in the new rule. Defensive tackle Chris Jones revealed afterward that they’ve talked about the new rule for two weeks. If the opposition scored a TD first, he said the Chiefs would’ve gone for 2 after a score. And the worst crime in taking the ball first is obviously ceding control to Mahomes. The 49ers head coach essentially granted the sport’s best player an extra down, the football equivalent of passing out rat poison for players to consume between sips of Gatorade. After the 49ers opted for the chip-shot field goal — Shanahan admitted he gave no consideration to going for it on fourth down — the Chiefs knew exactly how many points were needed to win the game. They’re using all downs necessary.
Hopefully the rest of the league was paying attention.
Nervously tip-toe through playoff games in such fashion vs. Mahomes and you lose. You are Karl Malone receiving an entry pass from John Stockton on the block with 22 seconds left in Game 6 of the NBA Finals. Malone also got lax — for a split-second — and in came Jordan to swat the ball away, dribble down the court with ease and drill the game-winner.
The elegance of that iconic finish mirrors everything we witnessed last night.
It’s no cliché to say Mahomes plays with the same cool as Jordan. It’s science. He slows everything down to his speed on his time. Back during the 2021 season, the tech company WHOOP tracked the quarterback’s heart rate. At the apex of the craziest game that season — KC’s divisional playoff win over Buffalo that prompted this OT change — Mahomes was freakishly calm each time the Chiefs offense took over with the season on the line. His heart rate spiked on the sideline. But when KC took over those final 13 seconds of regulation, down 36-33, his heart rate reached its calm “flow state.”
So, it doesn’t matter if the entire world’s watching a Super Bowl.
He operates devoid of stress.
“There’s no façade,” Chiefs coach Andy Reid said. “He comes to work every day humble, wanting to be great, challenges the guys around him to be great every play and never flinches.”
This Super Bore throttled into the classic everyone expected by the fourth quarter and through an 11-play, 64-yard drive to tie and 13-play, 75-yard drive to win, Mahomes completed passes with backyard ease. Everything was in-stride, catchable and the quarterback took off to run whenever necessary. In-between, Mahomes and wide receiver Rashee Rice were caught on camera yelling at each other. Whatever. On third and 6 in OT — with the 49ers sending the house — the QB threaded a crosser to Rice off his back foot. College teammates use to harass Mahomes for his “fat man jog,” but were also left amazed. Mahomes managed to always finish first in sprints, laughing all the way on a diet of Chipotle burritos. There he was again racing away from linebacker Fred Warner and cornerback Logan Ryan for 19 yards on third and 1.
Mahomes locked up a third Super Bowl MVP award with 333 yards on 34-of-46 passing and two touchdowns. He completed at least two passes to eight different receivers. He rushed for another 66 yards. As those closest to Mahomes explained to Go Long, this is someone who’s always had a unique relationship with pressure. There’s more to his magic than simply playing all sports imaginable.
Bears repeating, too. This was the year to get the Chiefs. For months, this appeared to be the ebb in their dynastic arc. Receivers dropped passes. Linemen were flagged nonstop. Kadarius Toney lined up offsides. What’s Wrong With the Chiefs? became weekly fodder as this offense spent the entire regular season figuring out its identity. They backed into the tournament as champs of a weak division, traveled to Buffalo and Baltimore as underdogs, won anyways, then took down the 49ers.
That’s the power of this one player. More than any quarterback in recent memory, he willed his offense to a title… all while panic steadily overwhelms the opposition. Before the OT gaffe, remember, Shanahan called an angry timeout to stop his defensive coordinator, Steve Wilks, from sending a Cover 0 blitz. Whatever plan this coaching staff had for Mahomes unraveled — fast — and the 49ers lost command of the game.
Super Bowl losses don’t get much more demoralizing than this. Beyond the micro of play-to-play regrets, there’s the macro of Shanahan’s topsy-turvy pursuit of his own quarterback.
Long ago, the 49ers drafted Stanford defensive tackle Solomon Thomas instead of Mahomes at No. 3 overall. Whoops.
Shanahan traded for Jimmy Garoppolo and then saw how far he was capable of leading this team. Garoppolo’s potential game-winner to Emmanuel Sanders in the 2019 Super Bowl was airmailed long. Shanahan went all-in on his own athletic specimen at the position, trading three first-rounders for the rights to a quarterback (Trey Lance) who played all of one season at North Dakota State. Brock Purdy came along, the last pick in the draft, and Shanahan decided to go roll with the fast processor instead.
No knock on Purdy. He played well enough for San Francisco to win this game.
But extreme waffling at the most important position in sports unquestionably came back to bite the 49ers. Despite exceptional trades (Trent Williams, Christian McCaffrey) and savvy drafting, this was a roster that sure could’ve used those first-round picks when Super Bowl LVIII entered do-or-die territory. An edge rusher opposite Nick Bosa. A corner to chase these KC receivers around. Quarterback indecision has a way of killing you off, even when you’ve done so much else right as a franchise.
In Mahomes’ NFL, there is no margin for error.
That’s why my thoughts during the postgame jamboree immediately went to Buffalo Bills owner Terry Pegula, the man who believed in Mahomes before anyone else but did not want to interfere. (That feature launched this site.) What’s he thinking right now? Knowing that he could be on the Super Bowl dais instead of Clark Hunt? That cannot be an easy sight to stomach. And, yes, we can debate the trajectory of Mahomes’ career as a Bill for endless hours upon hours. He obviously hit the jackpot with Reid as his coach and Alex Smith as his mentor. But the Bills’ consolation prize one year later — Wyoming’s Josh Allen — was a generational acquisition in its own right. The Bills are a rare team with a chance to steal a title.
Overcoming the greatest player on the planet takes the combination of special quarterbacking and special coaching.
One touchback through the end zone at Arrowhead or one coin-toss OT decision in Vegas is all Mahomes needs to slit your throat.
That’s why players, coaches and personnel men alike who’ve worked at One Bills Drive spoke so critically in our Bills series earlier this season. Many fear Pegula let his own special combo slip away. After winning Coach of the Year in 2022, things obviously turned sideways for Brian Daboll in Year 2 as the New York Giants head coach. We’ll see how he recalibrates in Year 3 but several prominent people in the organization that I spoke to believed Allen-Daboll was a pairing fully capable of winning Super Bowls in the Mahomes Era.
Their relationship — as detailed in Part III — was special.
The good news for WNY’ers is that Sean McDermott made some promising changes to his coaching style late last season. There’s still time to maximize Allen’s window but it won’t be easy. Major roster decisions await.
All teams interested in achievements beyond division-title hats better think through the Mahomes lens. He’s only 28 years old and you can bank on these Chiefs always evolving under Reid. They’ve got enough money to lock up Chris Jones, the defensive tackle who saved a touchdown with an overtime pressure of Purdy. And when a team reaches dynastic status like this, in-house free agents are more apt to take hometown discounts, while outside vets are willing to sign on the cheap to chase rings. This isn’t the monster Bill Belichick built in Foxborough, either. Ring-chasing does not come with the risk of being miserable for stretches of a football season.
Mahomes was surrounded by a C+ group of playmakers in 2023 guaranteed to load up for 2024.
Who can realistically fight back? The Cincinnati Bengals surely would like to have a word. They upset the Chiefs at Arrowhead in one AFC Championship and nearly did in another. Joe Burrow will return from his season-ending wrist injury and Mahomes’ own high school football coach, Adam Cook, cited Burrow as the one competitor wired like Mahomes.
As long as the Bills allow Allen to be himself, they’ll have a shot.
New contenders can always emerge, but it won’t be easy. For anyone. With each passing year, this era of the NFL looks more and more like the 1990s NBA and, no, Mahomes isn’t going to temporarily bail on his sport to play for the Binghamton Barons.
Rather, he leaves a trail of destruction (and Ewings) in his dust. Like Jordan.
One year ago, the Philadelphia Eagles lost a Super Bowl to the Chiefs in crushing fashion. Mahomes was victorious on one good leg, both Philly coordinators took head-coaching jobs elsewhere, and the next edition of the Eagles imploded so badly, so abruptly that many Eagles fans wanted Nick Sirianni fired. Time will tell how painful missing on Mahomes in that 2017 draft leaves everyone in Western New York. They weren’t the only team that passed on the Texas Tech QB. Choosing Mitchell Trubisky over Mahomes careened the Chicago Bears back into quarterback no man’s land.
And until further notice, nothing Shanahan accomplishes in a game before the Super Bowl matters.
Football is a cruel sport.
This sport’s ruler — the king in No. 15 atop the throne — is as inhumane as it gets.
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ICYMI:
The story of "Magic Mahomes"
It’s not very exciting to hear people who haven’t thought about the overtime rules for more than 24 hours be extremely confident they know what the correct answer is to receiving vs deferring when the people who have actually spent quite a bit of time thinking about it think it’s a toss-up. Andy Reid had been conservative all night, the defense was gassed, and if you can hold the team with 4 FGs and 1 TD to a FG, getting the ball first has a big advantage.
The whole talk of granting an extra down feels very strange too: you *always* have four downs in football. While kicking a field goal makes them less likely to kick a field goal on 4th down, there are plenty of situations where they would kick one anyway, or else be stuck having to convert a 4th and long—which is not, as you seem to suggest, an obviously bad situation where the team that was 10/20 on 3rd and 4th down is magically guaranteed to convert. This seems much more like reading a narrative backwards than it is actually considering what would or would not have been a good decision.
Shanahan did not make an “incorrect” decision. He took a calculated risk that didn’t pay off.
This is a column worthy of an AM radio hack, who always knows EXACTLY what every coach should have done…the day after it happened.