GLENDALE, Ariz. — On Thursday evening, Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs received his second N.F.L. Most Valuable Player Award, cementing him as probably the most achieved passer of a brand new crop of younger quarterbacks dominating the league. Three days later, he added the second Super Bowl victory of his profession, throwing for 182 yards and three touchdowns to beat the Philadelphia Eagles, 38-35.
The recreation concluded a tumultuous season for the N.F.L. by which Buffalo Bills security Damar Hamlin collapsed on the sector from a cardiac arrest throughout a recreation and high-profile hits to Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa renewed criticisms of how the league handles gamers’ well being, particularly concussions.
Mahomes fought by the playoffs with an harm of his personal, a excessive ankle sprain sustained within the divisional spherical final month that was aggravated within the second quarter Sunday.
Philadelphia dominated the primary half. Yet, with Kansas City going through a 10-point deficit to start the third quarter, Mahomes marshaled a resilient efficiency in a recreation noteworthy for pitting him in opposition to one other emergent passer, Jalen Hurts, within the first Super Bowl contested between two Black beginning quarterbacks.
In the tip, Mahomes additional enshrined himself because the face of the league as he embraced teammates below 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 recreation 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 within 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 in opposition to the Jacksonville Jaguars, and had been compromised for the A.F.C. championship recreation in opposition to the Cincinnati Bengals the following week.
Mahomes stated his harm rehabilitation had gone properly main into Sunday’s recreation, however after the Edwards deal with he lay on the bottom for a couple of moments earlier than limping to the sideline. Kansas City punted on the drive, resulting in an Eagles subject aim that prolonged their result in 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 go to the star tight finish Travis Kelce within the first quarter.
Mahomes stated in a postgame information convention that he didn’t obtain a painkilling injection from trainers within 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 primary half, Hurts had appeared to personal the second, propelling the Eagles with scoring runs of 1 and 4 yards and a 45-yard landing go to A.J. Brown in the beginning 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 major goal of Hurts. He caught 11 landing passes — half the scores Hurts threw — within the common season and, on Sunday, caught six passes for 96 yards.
Their pairing had helped Hurts become one of many league’s finest quarterbacks in his third season and second because the full-time starter. Hurts’s one mistake Sunday got here with just below 10 minutes remaining within 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 additional 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 within 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 prime 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 type to search for shorter throws, which proved efficient all through the season and helped gasoline Kansas City within the second half Sunday.
On the primary 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 brief bursts earlier than Mahomes examined that ankle by scrambling for a 14-yard achieve on a second down within the crimson zone to increase the sequence. The scamper appeared to embolden Mahomes in opposition to the Eagles’ stout protection earlier than Pacheco ran in a 1-yard rating to slender Philadelphia’s result in 3 factors.
The Eagles responded with a 17-play drive that ended when Jake Elliott kicked a 33-yard subject aim to provide Philadelphia a 27-21 lead late within the third quarter.
With 12 minutes remaining within the recreation, Mahomes orchestrated a nine-play, 75-yard drive that concluded with a 5-yard landing go 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 best 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 provide Kansas City a 35-27 lead with simply over 9 minutes remaining.
Hurts battled again, connecting with DeVonta Smith on a 46-yard go to arrange a landing on the sequence. 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 2 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 within 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 workers, fired Sirianni, then the receivers coach.
But since buying and selling as much as choose Mahomes within 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 recreation, possessing the ball practically 12 minutes longer than the Chiefs did. But on Kansas City’s last drive, Mahomes managed the clock with brief passes earlier than breaking by with a 26-yard run to place Kansas City contained in the crimson zone with a little bit over two minutes remaining. The Eagles’ protection, which amassed 70 sacks in the course of the common season, didn’t document a single sack of Mahomes within the recreation.
Philadelphia’s protection held Pacheco to a 2-yard achieve on the following play, and Mahomes’s subsequent go to Smith-Schuster fell incomplete. Facing third-and-8, Mahomes once more focused Smith-Schuster with a brief throw however cornerback James Bradberry was known 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 brief to maintain the clock operating and drive the Eagles to make use of their last timeouts. Mahomes knelt on the following two downs earlier than Harrison Butker kicked a 27-yard subject aim to offer 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.
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