Patrick Mahomes can become a legend by beating legends
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — You are 60 minutes from a Super Bowl, and here comes Bill Belichick, a stone-faced GOAT in a hoodie walking into your chilled igloo. You are 60 minutes from a Super Bowl, and here comes Tom Brady, 41-year-old Tom Brady, feeling and looking forever young at a time in the season and his career when he should be feeling and looking forever old, an old GOAT as it were.
They are the dreamwreckers, everybody’s worst nightmares, they are the Terminators, remorseless killing machines, and they’ll be back, time and time again, as America’s Most Unwanted.
And standing at the gates of Arrowhead Stadium waiting for them Sunday night is a baby GOAT, so gifted and so precocious, such a next-generation phenom that a starving, apoplectic fan base that has waited 49 years to win its second Super Bowl championship will be a red sea attempting to puncture Patriots eardrums with an unremitting howling for their young wunderkind to remind them where they are and who they are up against:
Home Sweet Mahomes.
This is the referendum night when we, and they, truly find out just how grown up Patrick Mahomes is … with a Super Bowl berth on the line and Belichick and Brady, still starring in “Dynasty,” standing defiantly in his way.
He is the Next Big Thing of his sport, a 23-year-old freak with a froggish voice and a signature hairstyle that is all the rage around town, and he has given these star-crossed Chiefs fans the kind of hope Len Dawson gave them once. He has given them more hope than Joe Montana gave them in 1993 when he arrived with great fanfare as a faded 37-year-old.
It is because he does such wondrous things with the football, jaw-dropping things that take your breath away. A Houdini in shoulder pads, escaping trouble then causing it. Magic Johnson in shoulder pads with the no-look passes to match.
No moment has been too big for him. He is a precocious gunslinger who makes his teammates believe nothing is impossible and impossible is nothing. He plays the game with an uncommon moxie and swagger and Brett Favre-like joie de vivre, with little or no fear of the consequences, which by itself makes him dangerous. He beats you with his arm and with his legs and with keeping plays alive and with eyes that see the field with 20-20 vision and never stop looking downfield.
“We’ll try to follow our rules, like we always do, and defend it the best we can,” Belichick said.
Mahomes is Kansas City’s Broadway Joe Namath, without the night life. He has electrified Chiefs fans the way Dwight Gooden — aka Dr. K — did Mets fans as a 19-year-old. The way Favre did Packers fans. Love at first sight the second you see it.
Every scout and every coach and every general manager and every NFL fan base dreams of a Patrick Mahomes.
The Kid threw for 5,097 yards and 50 touchdowns this season. Peyton Manning (5,455 yards and 55 TDs in 2013) is the only other quarterback in the 50-5,000 Club. And The Kid sure wasn’t wearing Huggies for his first playoff game against the Colts.
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Ice Bowl fears have melted, but Mahomes has yet to weather a game played in 20-something temperatures. Or Belichick and Brady in a Game of Thrones. It makes for the perfect storm that will demand Mahomes be The Ice Man.
“As long as we disrupt him by keeping him in the pocket and throwing the timing off, we’ll be good,” Patriots defensive end Deatrich Wise Jr. said.
What are the odds Mahomes throws fur TDs against the Patriots again, like he did earlier this season? What are the odds Belichick lets Tyreek Hill catch three TDs this time? Just because you put up 40 points in October doesn’t mean a thing in January when Belichick sees you a second time. And just because Brady looks 41 in December doesn’t mean he will look 41 in January.
“It’s not me against him,” Mahomes said.
Right.
It’s him against them, the Patriots, who are in their eighth straight AFC Championship, 13th overall, with an 8-4 record.
It is Mahomes’s first.
The Patriots are 28-10 in the playoffs.
Mahomes is 1-0.
Next-gen stats reveal Mahomes has thrown more deep passes than any quarterback this season (94). The Patriots have allowed the lowest deep completion percentage (24.2), and emerging undrafted rookie J.C. Jackson has upgraded the secondary.
Manning and the Colts lost the 2003 AFC Championship and in the 2004 Divisional round to Brady and Belichick before breaking through with a dramatic comeback win in the 2006 AFC Championship in Indianapolis. The psychological stress Belichick puts on young quarterbacks is immeasurable.
“When you play veteran teams like this,” Mahomes said, “you have to make sure you have a plan for everything every single play.”
And there’s this: Reid has his big-game demons to exorcise — including a loss in his only Super Bowl appearance, to Belichick and Brady with Donovan McNabb and the Eagles.
“This is not the week to have less than our best,” Brady said.
And there’s this: Brady and Belichick and the everyone-thinks-we-suck Patriots have their us-against-the-world shtick in full blast again.
“If you’re not motivated this week you’ve got a major problem,” Brady said.
The “world,” of course, doesn’t always lose. Brady is 3-4 in road playoff games. His touchdown-to-interception ratio in home playoff games is 46:18. On the road, it is 8:8. But In Brady They Trust.
“There’s just no reason to ever worry at that position for us,” Rob Gronkowski said.
And Brady and Belichick have lost three Super Bowls, including last season to the Eagles in LII.
“I’m going to go out there and try to make everybody proud that’s believed in me from the beginning until now,” Mahomes said.
If you want to be legendary, Kid, go win this Legends Game.
“It’s not one person, it’s not on one person’s shoulders every single week,” Mahomes said.
Well, Kid: It’s on your shoulders this week.
