The Indomitable Patrick Mahomes

We will get to Patrick Mahomes, obviously, because there has never been anyone quite like him, but this is the NFL, and that means that first we have to talk about a penalty that was called when many people think it should not have been called.

It’s funny, there are all sorts of prop bets for the Super Bowl, but best I can tell you there is no way to bet on, “What questionable referee call will the losing team blame?” The odds would be something like this:

2-1: A puzzling roughing-the-quarterback penalty
3-1: Calling a catch not a catch
3-1: Calling a non-catch a catch
5-1: Missing several blatant offensive line holding calls on the key play
6-1: Shaky defensive holding
8-1: Shaky pass interference
10-1: Blowing a spot that does/does not grant a critical first down
12-1: Late hit penalty that might not have been late
15-1: Suspect roughing the punter penalty (or not calling it)
20-1: Controversial forward pass/fumble call
25-1: Calling back a punt/kickoff return because of a dubious block in the back

I’m sure there are others.

This one was a defensive holding call at the end of the game, and for fun let’s put ourselves in the place of the back judge. Third down. Eight to go. The score is tied 35-all, Chiefs and Eagles, and there are less than two minutes left. The Chiefs have the ball at the Philadelphia 15, so they are well within field goal range. The Eagles have only one timeout left.

Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes drops back to throw. All quarter he has been going to his top wide receiver, JuJu Smith-Schuster — Smith-Schuster has five catches in the fourth quarter already — and with the Eagles double- or triple-teaming the Chiefs’ all-world tight end, Travis Kelce, it’s likely that Smith-Schuster will be the target again.

Philadelphia’s James Bradberry — a second-team All-Pro this year — is locked in one-on-one coverage.

Here’s what you see: Smith-Schuster breaks inside on the route and then cuts back out. He has run an effective pattern and he has Bradberry beat.

Bradberry knows it. He instinctively grabs just a little bit of Smith-Schuster’s jersey to slow him down. Smith-Schuster breaks away from that and he’s now heading toward the end zone, and Bradberry is behind him, bested, and in a last-ditch effort, Bradberry reaches out his left hand for Smith-Schuster’s hip. He grabs for the hip but doesn’t make strong contact.

Mahomes throws Smith-Schuster’s way — a good throw will be a touchdown — but the ball is overthrown. it falls harmlessly in the end zone.

Now, go ahead: You make the call.

Obviously, you could call holding. You saw the hold. You saw the grab of the jersey. You saw the hand to the hip. Was it blatant? Maybe not. It was clear, though. You definitely could call holding, because it was holding.

You also could let it go.

So, what would be the reasons to let it go? Well, you can scan social media this morning and find literally DOZENS of reasons to let it go, but let’s go through a few of them.

You could let it go because the penalty essentially ends the game.

If you call holding, the Chiefs will just round down the clock and kick the last-second field goal and there will be no more drama, tension or suspense. That’s not much fun. But if you let it go, the Chiefs will have to kick the field goal to take the lead and the Eagles will have time for a final drive, and that’s WAY more fun.

So, yes, you could let it go for fun’s sake.

But, yes, you did see holding.

You could let it go because you haven’t called holding all game long.

Maybe you’ve noticed this — and maybe you haven’t — but there hadn’t been a single defensive holding call all game. Have you been letting a bunch of holding calls go all game long? Maybe you have. Or maybe you just haven’t seen any other clear holds. Either way, it will set some people off if the first time you call defensive holding is now, at the end of the game, with so much on the line.

So you could let it go for the sake of equity and balance.

But, yes, you did see holding.

You could let it go so that the game could get the ending it deserves.

This has been a fantastic Super Bowl, filled with back-and-forth action, twists and turns, momentum shifts galore. With a grand ending, this has a chance to be widely viewed as the greatest Super Bowl ever played! The heart craves one more twist! One more turn! Calling holding here would give this masterpiece an unsatisfying ending.

So you could let it go for the sake of art.

But, yes, you did see holding.

You could let it go because Patrick Mahomes threw a bad pass.

Look, if Mahomes’ pass had gone just over Smith-Schuster’s outstretched fingertips, fine, maybe you could make the argument that Bradberry’s handiwork had prevented a touchdown. But that pass wasn’t even close. You could certainly make the case that the holding was not enough to affect the play or the game and could be overlooked.

So you could have let it go because the punishment (a first down) does not fit the crime (a hold that did not impact the play).

So you could have let it go for the sake of justice. 

But, yes, you did see holding.

In the end, the flag was thrown, and the game ended anticlimactically — with the Eagles trying to let the Chiefs score a touchdown and the Chiefs refusing to do so — and many Eagles fans will never forgive and many football fans will feel cheated by the ending they never saw and many Chiefs fans will shrug and go, “Hey, what do you want, it was holding, even Bradberry admitted as much, sorry, them’s the breaks, and the Chiefs were the better team.”

Yes, it was, in so many ways, the quintessential NFL game.

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Joe

When I arrived in Kansas City in 1996 to become a columnist at The Kansas City Star, Steve Bono was the Chiefs’ quarterback. Well, he was benched as the starter, and Rich Gannon was put in his place, but then Gannon got hurt and Bono was the quarterback for the team’s critical big game in Buffalo at the end of the season. Win and the Chiefs were in the playoffs. Lose and they were out.

The Chiefs’ coaches had so little faith in Bono, they let him throw the ball just seven times in the first half. He completed one of them for nine yards.

“It was like they knew all of our plays,” Chiefs center Tim Grunhard said, though this couldn’t have been much of a surprise since at one point the Chiefs ran the ball up the middle eight straight times. Anything to keep the ball out of Steve Bono’s hands.

That Christmas, Steve Bono jerseys flew off the shelves as local sports stores called them “The gag gift of the season!”

That was 20 or so years before the Chiefs, with the 10th overall pick, drafted a quarterback out of Texas Tech named Patrick Mahomes II. If the name sounded familiar, it might have been because his father, Pat Mahomes, pitched a few games against the Kansas City Royals in his big league career.*

*He struggled mightily, going 0-4 with an 8.49 ERA against Kansas City.

The drafting of Mahomes ended a more than quarter-century-long love affair the Chiefs had with other teams’ quarterbacks. Starting in 1988, the Chiefs’ quarterbacks were:

• Steve DeBerg (from Tampa Bay)

• Dave Krieg (from Seattle)

• Joe Montana (from San Francisco)

• Steve Bono (from San Francisco)

• Elvis Grbac (from San Francisco)

• Rich Gannon (from Washington — after missing a season with injury)

• Trent Green (from St. Louis)

• Damon Huard (from New England and two years out of the league)

• Tyler Thigpen (from Minnesota; drafted in the seventh round)

• Matt Cassel (from New England)

• Alex Smith (from San Francisco)

That’s some run. A couple of those quarterbacks, it should be said — specifically Trent Green and Alex Smith — were often better than typical game managers, but the larger point was that the Chiefs were not looking for quarterbacks who could win games. They were looking for quarterbacks who would not lose them.

Mahomes has that knack for delivering when the chips are down. (Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)

That’s why it was so jolting when they took Mahomes. It wasn’t just that they were taking a quarterback in the first round of the draft for the first time in 34 years. They were taking a quarterback with unlimited potential and many skeptics. It was the ultimate roll of the dice. Everybody loved his arm and playmaking ability. But many people around the NFL thought him too mercurial, too inconsistent and too unpredictable to build a team around.

He was exactly the opposite of what had been the Chiefs’ ideal quarterback.

You can say that it worked out.

I believe that Patrick Mahomes plays the quarterback position better than anyone in NFL history. I’m not saying he’s the greatest ever quarterback, because his career is still young and there’s so much left to do and others were great for so much longer.

But just as I believe that Tiger Woods played golf better than anyone from 2000 through 2008, just as I believe that Novak Djokovic played tennis better than anyone from 2011 through 2016, just as I believe that Pedro Martinez pitched better than anyone from 1997 through 2003, so I believe that Patrick Mahomes has taken the quarterback position to a new height.

He has started for five seasons. The Chiefs have made the AFC Championship Game five times, and they’ve made three Super Bowls, and they’ve now won two of them. Sunday’s game was his gutsiest. He was playing on a high ankle sprain that he re-aggravated at the end of the first half. The Chiefs trailed by 10. Things were not looking especially good.

The Chiefs HAD to score on their opening drive of the second half or the game was likely over. Mahomes hit all three of his passes, scrambled for 14 yards on a key play and the Chiefs did score.

They were down six when they got the ball back — again, it was a critical, must-score situation. Mahomes was six for six on the drive, the last pass a clever little throw to Kadarius Toney, who had pretended to go in motion and then came back. Mahomes did not hesitate; he just threw it across the field for the score.

That gave the Chiefs a lead. Kansas City got the ball back at the Philadelphia 5 after a breathtaking punt return by Toney. Mahomes threw the touchdown pass to Skyy Moore on third down when the Eagles sent an all-out blitz at him. It was startling how calm he looked on the play.

And finally, on the final drive, it was Mahomes, on that ankle sprain, running 26 yards to put the Chiefs in field goal range.

He just does anything and everything. You know about the tricky stuff — the left-handed throws, the no-look passes, the underhand flips. You know about his incredible ability to make plays outside the pocket. You know about the laser throws he can make from any angle. You know about his ability to gain big and crucial yards with his legs.

But it also turns out that he’s as tough as anybody. There’s a comparison to be made with Muhammad Ali; the young Ali was so fast, so lightning quick, opponents couldn’t even hit him. He’d dance around all night, dodging and feinting and jabbing, and fighters would just find their faces full of gloves, their eyes cut, their will gone.

But when Ali got older, you found he also had this extraordinary fighter’s heart. He’d always get up. Always. Joe Frazier sent him to the canvas. He fought on. George Foreman blasted him with everything he had. He fought on. Ken Norton broke his jaw. He fought on.

So it is with Patrick Mahomes. He’s been beat up, knocked down, hurt badly enough that he could barely walk. He’s had disappointing performances in big games. He had his most lethal weapon, Tyreek Hill, go to another team. He fights on. The Chiefs players, particularly Travis Kelce, went on for a while after the game about the disrespect they faced. “Nobody picked us!” Kelce bellowed.

This just seems to be the style today; whenever a team wins anything, players want to point to all those who said it couldn’t be done. And whenever I sound a bit skeptical about it, whenever I say something like, hey, the Chiefs had been to four straight AFC Championship Games, I’m pretty sure SOMEBODY SOMEWHERE picked them, I get hit with all the receipts, all the lists of people who picked the Bills or Bengals or Chargers or some other team.

So maybe it’s true. Maybe people really didn’t think the Chiefs could do it.

But if it’s true, people are dumb. I don’t see why you’d ever bet against Patrick Mahomes.