Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes took the podium following Kansas City’s heartbreaking loss to the Cincinnati Bengals in the AFC Championship on Sunday. The Chiefs went into the locker room with a 21-10 lead at halftime, only to squander it away in the second half thanks to poor play calling and great defense on Cincinnati’s part.
It began to roll downhill for Kansas City on the final play of the second quarter. Rather than kicking a field goal, the Chiefs aggressively kept the offense on the field, looking to pull a fast one on the Bengals’ defense by getting the ball to Tyreek Hill in the flat at the two-yard line. Instead, Cincy had two defenders waiting to blow up the play and keep hill out of the end zone.
Mahomes told the media after the game that the play wasn’t supposed to have gone that way and admits he got a little greedy.
“Yeah, we had just ran a play. It took four seconds the play before, where I burned [Kansas City’s last timeout], so I knew the time was low. Obviously, I knew we needed to get points. We called a play that we were trying to get someone over the middle quick. Then I was supposed to throw the ball away [but] I got a little greedy there and tried to get the ball to Tyreek [Hill] and get a touchdown, [but] they had two people out there, so definitely in the long run of things, it looks bad, but if we had another chance, I would’ve went for another play,” said Mahomes.
After making the last two Super Bowls, winning the whole thing in 2019, championship runs have turned into a standard around One Arrowhead Drive. Mahomes said there’s plenty of good to take away from the 2021 campaign, but in the end, the only thing that matters is reaching another Super Bowl, and they failed to accomplish that task.
“You take away the good things, just like any season.,” said Mahomes. “It’s definitely disappointing. I mean here, with this group of guys that we have, we expect to be in that game and to win, and anything less than that is not success. So we’ll go back and look at all the things we did well, the adversity we battled through, the better team that we became towards the end of the season, and try to learn from the mistakes that we made and try to be better next year,” he explained.
The overall performance from the Chiefs’ offense in the first and second halves was undoubtedly a night and day sort of difference. The team didn’t lose a step, quickly mounting up a 21-3 lead late in the second quarter, but everything began to unravel as the mistakes and miscues began to pile up.
“There were a few misreads here and there, there were guys that were open, who I didn’t hit at the right time, or I passed up something shorter to get something deeper down the field,” Mahomes recalled. “When you’re playing a good team and don’t take what’s there, and try to get a little bit more than what’s necessary, it can bite you in the butt. We were playing so well in the first half, and in the second half, we were just off a tick, and that’s all it takes to lose a football game,” Mahomes explained.
Mahomes was just as disappointed as anyone else inside the Chiefs’ organization, but he hasn’t lost sight of how much the team accomplished just the get to this point in the postseason. His message was clear to the rest of his teammates moments after the game.
“I said I was proud of those guys,” said Mahomes. “I mean, if you look at the season we had, to be in this game in general, it’s definitely a special group of guys that battled through adversity. But the leaders on this team know that this isn’t our standard. We want to win the Super Bowl. Whenever you taste that -winning the Super Bowl – nothing less than that is a success. So we have to go back, obviously, every locker room is different, but we have the core group of guys that it takes to win. So we have to go back and learn from this and try to be better next year,” he confirmed.
As Mahomes said, Super Bowl is the standard, which makes the last four seasons so disappointing, knowing how close the team has been to have the opportunity to collect more than one championship.
“You’re definitely disappointed,” Mahomes started. “I mean, when you’re this close, and you’re in the final four games, you wanna win the Super Bowl. We had four years in a row where we lost an AFC Championship, won a Super Bowl, lost a Super Bowl, and lost an AFC championship, so, a few plays here and there, you could’ve had four chances at a Super Bowl, Mahomes noted. “So it’s definitely disappointing, but you have to learn from it. You can’t let this end what we have here. You have to make sure you continue to battle, continue to get better and try to find ways to win Super Bowls at the end of the day,” he said.
The Bengals did an excellent job of taking away opportunities for Mahomes to use his legs to gain extra yards. Last week against the Buffalo Bills, he ran for 69 yards and a score on seven scrambles. He only had 19 yards on three scrambles on Sunday.
“They had a spy on me for the most part,” Mahomes recalled. “I’ve usually done a great job of getting around that guy, but they had a good game plan. They were doing a lot of similar stuff in the first half, we were just executing at a higher level, but they stayed with it, [and] they fought. That’s a good football team, but it takes a lot of fight to stay in a game when you’re down like that. But [at the same time] I’ve got to be better. I mean, when you’re up 21-3 at one point in a game, you can’t lose it. I put that on myself,” he proclaimed.
The Chiefs had a chance late in the fourth quarter to punch in the game-winning score from the five-yard line. It was the only time Kansas City got that close to the end zone in the second half, but great coverage and a good pass rush by the Bengals led to Mahomes going down for two sacks in two plays, for a loss of 22 yards.
Despite the error-filled second half, the Chiefs still had a chance to retake the lead and the game. Kansas City won the coin toss to get the ball first to start the overtime period, but it didn’t take long before an opportunistic play by the Bengals cemented the nail in the Chiefs’ coffin. Mahomes threw a bomb intended for Tyreek Hill down the left sideline. Unfortunately, the ball was tipped by one Bengals defender and into the hands of another for the interception.
Mahomes got asked about both situations and the kind of coverage the Bengals were throwing at him.
“The red zone, we were only down there once in the second half, so it wasn’t like we were having a ton of success. It was at that point at the end of the game they were just blocking the end zone, trying to keep us to a field goal. You gotta be in the red zone more to have more success than that,” he explained.
“On the overtime interception,” began Mahomes. “I knew the safety was going to make a run at it, but I wanted to give my guy a chance, and it got tipped by one safety, and it fell right into the other dude’s hands,” Mahomes shrugged. “I mean, I would’ve done it again. Whenever you got a guy like Tyreek running, and he has a step on someone, give him a chance to make a play. Eight out ten times, he makes that catch, but it didn’t work for us today, but that’s a play I would go to again if I had a chance,” he said.
Mahomes ends the 2021 postseason completing 89 of 122 passes for 1,057 yards, nine touchdowns, and three picks through three games. He finished the regular season with 436 completions out of 658 passing attempts for 4,839 yards, 37 touchdowns, and 13 interceptions. On the ground, Mahomes rushed for 381 yards and two scores on 66 rushing attempts.
About Author
