Eagles force three Patrick Mahomes turnovers in Super Bowl win: ‘I didn’t play to my standard’
After a week that included a lot of talk about Mahomes' legacy and candidacy as the G.O.A.T., the Eagles handed the three-time champ one of his worst-ever defeats.
NEW ORLEANS — After getting shut out in the first half for just the third time in his NFL career, Patrick Mahomes looked up from the bench in disbelief.
Nothing had gone right for the Kansas City Chiefs on offense. Mahomes had thrown two interceptions — a pick-six to Cooper DeJean, his first NFL interception, and a backbreaker to Zack Baun after the two-minute warning, which set the Eagles up inside the Chiefs’ 15-yard line. Jalen Hurts promptly threw a touchdown to A.J. Brown to put the Birds up 24 at the half, the second-largest halftime lead in Super Bowl history.
For almost three quarters, the only history it looked like we might see was the first Super Bowl shutout. The dream of the three-peat was nearly over. Mahomes managed to find Xavier Worthy for a touchdown in the third quarter to get the Chiefs on the board at 34-6, but the two-point conversion pass to Travis Kelce fell incomplete. It was that kind of night.
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In truth, the game was never close. The Eagles overwhelmed the Chiefs in the trenches, sacking Mahomes a career-worst six times, including a strip-sack by Milton Williams in the fourth quarter. The defensive backs, including rookies DeJean and Quinyon Mitchell, locked up the Chiefs’ receivers. All the while, the Birds fans in the building made the Superdome feel like the Linc.
But Mahomes knew after those two interceptions that the game had nearly slipped out of his team’s grasp.
“When you give the other team 14 points, especially a really good football team, a Super Bowl football team, not a lot of good things happen,” Mahomes said afterward. “That’s why I take ownership of this loss more than any loss in my entire career, because I put us in a bad spot. Even though we put up some stats at the end of the game, those stats didn’t really matter, because we had already lost the momentum.”
Mahomes threw two fourth-quarter touchdowns, including a 50-yarder to Worthy after the Eagles had already showered Nick Sirianni in yellow Gatorade, to make the score closer than the game felt.
Even though Mahomes said postgame that those touchdowns didn’t matter, his teammates said he didn’t act like it on the field.
“[Mahomes] stayed positive the entire time, kept fighting, led by example, played his tail off every single snap this game,” Chiefs offensive lineman Creed Humphrey said.
As Kenny Pickett knelt in victory formation to cap the 40-22 win, tears fell from Mahomes’ eyes. Earlier in the week, Mahomes said the game that stuck with him more than any in his career was his Super Bowl LV loss to Tom Brady and the Buccaneers.
On Sunday, he added another game to that list, to go along with an at times frustrating season.
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“I didn’t play to my standard, especially the struggles that I had early in the season,” Mahomes said. “There’s things that I have to get better at, and they showed today on the biggest stage.”
Postgame, Mahomes was calm, resigned. After weeks of discussion on whether he could overtake Brady, who was in the booth calling Sunday’s Super Bowl for Fox, as the greatest quarterback of all time with a three-peat, he goes home still with just three Super Bowl rings, four shy of tying Brady’s record.
Eagles defensive coordinator Vic Fangio, who’d never beaten Mahomes in eight tries, finally found the right combination to plug the Chiefs’ run game, which tallied just 49 yards, and stifle Mahomes in the passing game.
“He’s a human, man,” receiver DeAndre Hopkins said. “I guess all y’all got to see that.”