How the Chiefs Beat the Eagles to Win the Super Bowl

Mahomes fought by the playoffs with an damage of his personal, a excessive ankle sprain sustained in the divisional spherical final month that was aggravated in the second quarter Sunday.

Philadelphia dominated the first half. Yet, with Kansas City dealing with a 10-point deficit to start the third quarter, Mahomes marshaled a resilient efficiency in a sport noteworthy for pitting him towards one other emergent passer, Jalen Hurts, in the first Super Bowl contested between two Black beginning quarterbacks.

In the finish, Mahomes additional enshrined himself as the face of the league as he embraced teammates beneath cascading crimson and gold confetti, particularly after the seven-time champion Tom Brady retired (for good, he stated) 11 days earlier than the Super Bowl.

Like Brady, Mahomes delivered an exhilarating comeback, this time, from a 10-point second-half deficit, which earned him sport M.V.P. honors.

“To be down to a team like that and come back and win the game,” Mahomes stated, “I wish I’d make it easier and not be down, but I play better when we are down.”

With simply over one minute left in the first half and Kansas City trailing by 21-14, Mahomes scrambled exterior the pocket however Eagles linebacker T.J. Edwards tackled him by his proper ankle. Mahomes had injured that ankle Jan. 21 towards the Jacksonville Jaguars, and had been compromised for the A.F.C. championship sport towards the Cincinnati Bengals the subsequent week.

Mahomes stated his damage rehabilitation had gone effectively main into Sunday’s sport, however after the Edwards deal with he lay on the floor for a couple of moments earlier than limping to the sideline. Kansas City punted on the drive, main to an Eagles discipline purpose that prolonged their lead to 24-14. As Mahomes reached the bench, he took off his helmet and grimaced in misery. Until that time, he had thrown for 89 yards, together with a 18-yard landing cross to the star tight finish Travis Kelce in the first quarter.

Mahomes stated in a postgame information convention that he didn’t obtain a painkilling injection from trainers in the locker room throughout halftime, however “did some stuff to get it ready,” together with taping the ankle.

“He grew up in a locker room,” Coach Andy Reid stated of Mahomes, whose father, Pat, performed Major League Baseball for 11 seasons. “He’s seen the greats and he strives to be the greatest. Without saying anything, that’s the way he works. He wants to be the greatest player ever.”

In the first half, Hurts had appeared to personal the second, propelling the Eagles with scoring runs of 1 and 4 yards and a 45-yard landing cross to A.J. Brown at the begin of the second quarter. Since being acquired by way of an low season commerce with the Tennessee Titans, Brown had bolstered the Eagles’ offense and have become a main goal of Hurts. He caught 11 landing passes — half the scores Hurts threw — in the common season and, on Sunday, caught six passes for 96 yards.

Their pairing had helped Hurts turn into one among the league’s greatest quarterbacks in his third season and second as the full-time starter. Hurts’s one mistake Sunday got here with just below 10 minutes remaining in the first half, when he fumbled and Kansas City linebacker Nick Bolton returned it 36 yards for a landing, tying the rating at 14 after the further level.

“You never know what play it will be, but it hurt us,” stated Hurts, who completed with 304 passing yards and 4 touchdowns. He set a document for many dashing yards by a quarterback in the Super Bowl, with 70. “You look back and you reflect on the things maybe you could have done something more, maybe you could have tried to done something that could change the outcome of the game and that’s the way it was.”

While Hurts’s crew added a star receiver earlier than the season who ended up taking part in a key position in a Super Bowl run, Mahomes noticed a high goal, the speedy Tyreek Hill, traded to Miami. With the additions of Marquez Valdes-Scantling and JuJu Smith-Schuster in free company, Mahomes tailored his model to search for shorter throws, which proved efficient all through the season and helped gasoline Kansas City in the second half Sunday.

On the first drive after halftime, Mahomes returned to the big-game daring that’s his calling card. The rookie operating again Isiah Pacheco and the undersized veteran again Jerick McKinnon ignited the offense with quick bursts earlier than Mahomes examined that ankle by scrambling for a 14-yard achieve on a second down in the crimson zone to prolong the collection. The scamper appeared to embolden Mahomes towards the Eagles’ stout protection earlier than Pacheco ran in a 1-yard rating to slender Philadelphia’s lead to 3 factors.

The Eagles responded with a 17-play drive that ended when Jake Elliott kicked a 33-yard discipline purpose to give Philadelphia a 27-21 lead late in the third quarter.

With 12 minutes remaining in the sport, Mahomes orchestrated a nine-play, 75-yard drive that concluded with a 5-yard landing cross to Kadarius Toney to take a 28-27 lead.

Kansas City’s protection pressured the Eagles to punt with simply over 10 minutes remaining, and Toney collected the ball and wove by Philadelphia’s protection crew down the proper sideline for a 65-yard achieve, the longest punt return in Super Bowl historical past. Three performs later, Mahomes threw a 4-yard landing to the rookie Skyy Moore to give Kansas City a 35-27 lead with simply over 9 minutes remaining.

Hurts battled again, connecting with DeVonta Smith on a 46-yard cross to arrange a landing on the collection. Hurts carried in a 2-yard run, his third landing carry, earlier than punching in a 2-point conversion that tied the sport at 35-35 with simply over 5 minutes remaining.

“To me, Jalen played the best game I’ve seen him play in the two years that we’ve been together,” Eagles Coach Nick Sirianni stated. “He was outstanding. I really thought he was in complete control.”

The back-and-forth affair exemplified the symmetry and parallels between the two groups. Perhaps fittingly, each coaches, every tried to beat groups that when employed them.

Reid coached the Eagles from 1999 to 2012, and led the crew to a Super Bowl berth in the 2004 season. But the Eagles proprietor Jeffrey Lurie fired Reid after the crew posted a 4-12 document in 2012, the worst marketing campaign in Reid’s tenure. Reid joined Kansas City simply days afterward and, as a part of putting in a brand new employees, fired Sirianni, then the receivers coach.

But since buying and selling up to choose Mahomes in the first spherical of the 2017 N.F.L. draft, Kansas City has created a dynasty. Since turning into the full-time stater in 2018, Mahomes has appeared in 5 consecutive A.F.C. championship video games and three of the final 4 Super Bowls.

The Eagles decided a lot of the tempo of Sunday’s sport, possessing the ball almost 12 minutes longer than the Chiefs did. But on Kansas City’s ultimate drive, Mahomes managed the clock with quick passes earlier than breaking by with a 26-yard run to place Kansas City inside the crimson zone with slightly over two minutes remaining. The Eagles’ protection, which amassed 70 sacks throughout the common season, didn’t document a single sack of Mahomes in the sport.

Philadelphia’s protection held Pacheco to a 2-yard achieve on the subsequent play, and Mahomes’s subsequent cross to Smith-Schuster fell incomplete. Facing third-and-8, Mahomes once more focused Smith-Schuster with a brief throw however cornerback James Bradberry was referred to as for defensive holding on the play, a penalty which gave Kansas City a brand new set of downs.

“It was a holding,” Bradberry stated of the pivotal infraction. “I tugged his jersey. I was hoping they,” the sport officers, “would let it slide.”

McKinnon discovered daylight on a first-down run from the Eagles’ 11-yard line and will have scored however tiptoed to the 2-yard line the place he stopped quick to maintain the clock operating and power the Eagles to use their ultimate timeouts. Mahomes knelt on the subsequent two downs earlier than Harrison Butker kicked a 27-yard discipline purpose to present the ultimate rating.

In the locker room after the sport, as Kansas City’s gamers sparked cigars and sprayed champagne, Mahomes unwrapped a championship wrestling belt, one other award in a rising assortment.