Inside Patrick Mahomes’s Biggest Play in the AFC Championship

The Chiefs came up with the eventual dagger at the team hotel Saturday night, and it was their all-universe quarterback who demanded the ball in his hands to send Kansas City to Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas.

On first and second down, Andy Reid played it by the book.

An Isiah Pacheco run up the middle, stuffed for a one-yard loss, forcing the Baltimore Ravens to burn their second timeout. Pacheco again, off right tackle, for two yards, making Baltimore spend its final timeout. And with 2:19 left in the AFC championship, Reid’s all-universe quarterback trotted back to the sideline, with a set of directions for the coaches.

Put the ball in my hands, Patrick Mahomes told them.

To the untrained ear, that might’ve sounded like simple bravado from a superstar. In this case, it was more than that. It went back about 20 hours or so to the Kansas City Chiefs’ weekly Saturday night quarterbacks meeting at the team hotel in the Baltimore suburbs.

Reid on Mahomes: “He’s spectacular. I’ve been blessed to have coached some great quarterbacks. He is something special.” :: Tommy Gilligan/USA TODAY Sports

It was there that Reid, offensive coordinator Matt Nagy, pass-game coordinator Joe Bleymeier, quarterbacks coach David Girardi, and offensive assistants Corey Matthaei, Dan Williams and Kevin Saxton met with Mahomes and backup QB Blaine Gabbert, coming up with the call that would be the eventual dagger to send Kansas City to Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas. It was Mahomes’s confidence in their idea that prompted the demand.

“We had that ready for the moment,” Nagy told me on the field postgame, a swing pass away from the stage where the Chiefs accepted another Lamar Hunt Trophy. “We had a handful of plays, we were on the sideline talking through the situation, probably halfway through the fourth quarter—if we get into this moment, what are we going to do? We’d talked about that at the hotel.”

The concept from the night before called for three in-breaking routes out of a three-by-one formation (three wide receivers to the left, one to the right), with a back and tight end staying in to help against the blitz. For the play to work, the protection would have to give Mahomes time, and his receivers would have to win against man-to-man coverage. And, of course, Mahomes would have to make the throw.

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“You know in that situation, they’re going to pressure you,” Nagy continued. “Now it’s about the guys making the plays.”

Check. Check. And checkmate.

Much-maligned receiver Marquez Valdes-Scantling beat Ravens corner Arthur Maulet, and Mahomes stood in against pressure and got the ball to where only his receiver could catch it.

The play covered 32 yards, driving the aforementioned dagger into the Ravens.

“We get the quarterbacks’ input on things [on Saturday night], and that, jointly, was the play we wanted at that particular time,” Reid told me in a quiet moment after the game. “We try to cover all those situations, make sure we have it well thought out before we get in there. That was the result of it."

The result, ultimately, was a 17–10 win for the Chiefs in Baltimore. The result of it was a fourth trip to the Super Bowl in five years for Kansas City. And maybe most of all, the result of it was another Mahomes moment in a massive spot, something that, by now, we should all be pretty accustomed to.

Simply put, it’s why the Chiefs never hesitate to put the ball in his hands.

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The Super Bowl is set, the Senior Bowl week is here, the conference champions are headed for their respective bye weeks, and we have plenty to dig into this morning …

• We have a detailed preview of 49ers-Chiefs through the eyes of scouts.

• A dive into the herculean effort the Kansas City defense put into slowing Lamar Jackson.

• More coaching carousel nuggets than you can shake a stick at in this week’s takeaways.

But we’re starting in Baltimore where I spent my Sunday with the Chiefs and Ravens.

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Nagy on Kelce's back-shoulder catch for a touchdown: “That’s two of the greatest players on earth making a play.” :: Tommy Gilligan/USA TODAY Sports

This, to be sure, has been a different year for Mahomes. Tyreek Hill’s been gone for nearly two years now. Travis Kelce’s been banged up, and wasn’t himself for most of the 2023 season. The offensive line is breaking in new tackles, and the team itself has leaned more on its defense than at any point since he became the starter in 2018.

As such, the group around the quarterback isn’t as equipped for him to light the world on fire.

“That’s been us all year,” Nagy says. “We talked about it last week. We figure out ways to win games different ways. All year long, we haven’t been a 30-point, 40-point offense. That’s not us. I think when you’re a successful player at the quarterback position, you’re going to have different teams every year. We went through a lot this year, there were people that doubted us—you can’t score. You’re going to have to ride the defense. They’re in trouble.

“Our offensive players really stuck together.”

For Mahomes, sticking with it meant learning to operate with a shortened margin for error, which, in certain games, meant having a feel for when it was time to put the cape on and be Superman—and, just as importantly, when it wasn’t.

"We always talk about ruthless versus reckless,” Nagy says. “That’s real. If you think about it, you want to try to rip somebody’s heart out, but you gotta do it the right way. You’ve got to be smart with it. If it’s not there, don’t make a bad play worse. Throw the ball away. He knows he’s got a phenomenal defense, great special teams, so use it if it’s not there.”

Sunday was a microcosm of that.

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The Chiefs scored only 17 points, which in itself marks the change in the makeup of the team around the star quarterback. And how it’s manifested with Mahomes may best be illustrated in the way, postgame, Reid actually brought up the quarterback taking a sack as one of his best plays.

That came a possession before Mahomes’s throw to Valdes-Scantling. He took the sack on a second-and-6 with 5:55 left. It forced the Ravens to spend their first timeout, which, of course, meant Baltimore didn’t have any timeouts left at the two-minute warning after which Mahomes took three knees to end the game.

“He did a great job with that,” Reid says. “Maybe some of his biggest plays were just taking that sack, and not getting the ball back to them [as fast].”

But when the time came for Mahomes to wear the “S” on his chest, the 28-year-old went into the phone booth to summon the guy we’ve all come to expect him to be.

The first of those moments arrived on the Chiefs’ first possession of the game from the Ravens’ 41 on a fourth-and-2. Reid left the offense on the field. On the play he called, Mahomes’s first read wasn’t there, nor was his second. And the third read was a throw Mahomes saw as he was chased to his right, with Kelce coming across the backside of the play.

“They just zoned us out,” Nagy says. “We stayed within the play. Pat did a great job. Kelce made a great catch. That was just part of the progression.”

An easy throw—inside to his left and across his body as he rolled right—it was not. But, as Nagy says, smiling, “It’s Pat.” And three plays later, it was Pat, and Kelce, again, this time on a back-shoulder throw with Baltimore’s All-Pro safety Kyle Hamilton draped all over Kelce for a 19-yard touchdown.

“They covered it,” Nagy says. “That’s two of the greatest players on earth making a play. We put that in and they were wanting that all week long. He just made a hell of a throw and it was a magical catch.”

The catch capped the 10-play, 86-yard drive followed by one that grinded out 75 yards in 16 plays, and necessitated more Mahomes magic, particularly on the final two of that possession’s four third-down conversions.

The first is the one that’ll be remembered most—with Mahomes dodging, then running past Jadeveon Clowney, Justin Madubuike and Roquan Smith, and willing the ball downfield as he took a shot low from Kyle Van Noy. He got just enough on it for Kelce to dive at the ball, corral it, and pick up the first down.

"We’ve been watching it for six years now with Pat,” Nagy says. “He gets in scramble mode, and if a play’s there, we hit it. So many times in the red zone, third down, you might get something where you have to extend the play, and that’s what he and Kelce did. Those guys, they just got that connection.”

On the second of the two, he, again, made something out of nothing, finding a way to weave through the Ravens defense for four yards on third-and-3. Two plays later, Pacheco scored from two yards out, a perfect illustration of how different things have been this year. And with 10:56 left in the first half, it was the final touchdown either team would score in the AFC title game.

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Mahomes and Kelce will find out in two weeks if this version of the Chiefs can beat the 49ers in the Super Bowl like the 2019 version did in Miami :: Geoff Burke/USA TODAY Sports

Because of what he’s used to, this one probably felt pretty different for Mahomes.

But his approach, according to those around him, hasn’t changed a touch—he figures out what he needs to do to win. And in comparing Mahomes with his old quarterback, Aaron Rodgers, Valdes-Scantling opened a window into how the Chiefs’ two-time, and maybe soon to be three-time, Super Bowl champion quarterback puts all of that to work.

“It’s crazy because they’re very, very similar in what they do and how they approach the game,” he says. “Very competitive. I think Aaron’s a lot more quiet than Pat. Pat’s more vocal, but they both have that edge about them, that they want to win every single play. Not even just every single game. They want to win every single play.”

And that, as Reid alluded to, has taken on different meanings at different points this year, and even at different points through Sunday’s game.

Is the 2019 version of Patrick Mahomes, with Hill and Kelce and Sammy Watkins alongside, taking a sack and counting it as one of his best plays of a playoff game? Probably not.

But that version also doesn’t have the defense of this year’s version, or the issues to work through at the skill positions. Which makes it feel like the winning plays are ones that seem like losses in the moment, yet fit perfectly to set up those plays where he knows when it’s his time to rise to the occasion.

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“He’s got an internal dark side in the right way,” Nagy says. “It’s a dark side where he creates an edge. When he gets out here on the field, he becomes a different player. There’s no one as competitive as him. Nobody. The great ones are very, very competitive and they find ways to win. They fight through adversity. …. He just makes special plays in special moments.”

It’s also an innate awareness for knowing when to be a game manager and not a playmaker.

“He’s spectacular,” Reid says. “I’ve been blessed to have coached some great quarterbacks. He is something special.”

And just as it started with Mahomes on Sunday, with the two long drives, it ended with him, too, and that massive throw on third down to finish Baltimore off.

Just like the Chiefs drew it up—the night before.