Watch Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs host the Cincinnati Bengals in the AFC Championship Game at Arrowhead Stadium on Sunday; Kick-Off at 8pm, with live coverage underway on Sky Sports NFL from 7pm
Sunday 30 January 2022 16:27, UK
"These Chiefs, they are like a dragon that is just so hard to slay."
Just 13 seconds left. Trailing by three. Facing the NFL's No 1 ranked defense. Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs had no right beating the Buffalo Bills in their epic divisional round clash last Sunday. But yet, they did, prompting the above response from Sky Sports NFL's Neil Reynolds.
Mahomes threw two clutch completions, to Tyreek Hill for 19 yards, and then to Travis Kelce for 25, to set up a game-tying 49-yard field goal from Harrison Butker as time expired. In overtime, Mahomes then duly marched Kansas City 75 yards down the field in eight plays, tossing an eight-yard TD to Kelce for the walk-off score.
Mahomes had 177 yards passing - nearly half of his 378 total - come in the final two minutes alone, as he answered every Josh Allen touchdown for the Bills with points for the Chiefs. The two teams combined for 25 total points in those crazy final couple of minutes.
It was a performance indicative of a quarterback who simply doesn't know when he is beaten, one with unshakable confidence that can only be aided by how infrequently he has had to taste defeat in his four years as a starter in the NFL.
The Chiefs quarterback has never failed to reach the AFC Championship game, let alone missed out on the playoffs altogether or registered a losing season - an outcome which is an all too grim a reality for most of the league's 31 other teams and their quarterbacks.
Mahomes is preparing for a fourth-straight Conference Championship game appearance this Sunday, with the chance to reach a third-straight Super Bowl. And in those previous appearances, he has showed numerous further examples of his 'unbeatable' nature.
On his very first Championship Sunday, Mahomes dragged Kansas City back from a 14-0 first-half deficit to the mighty AFC juggernaut that was Tom Brady's New England Patriots and forced overtime with two quickfire completions of 21 and 27 yards to Spencer Ware and Demarcus Robinson to set up a Butker field goal. Sound familiar? Yes, although this time Mahomes had a tiny bit more than 13 seconds to work with, 39 to be precise.
Sadly, in overtime, Mahomes and the Chiefs would be denied, falling foul of the exact same rules that worked in their favour in defeating the Bills last Sunday, as New England scored a walk-off touchdown on their opening possession to end the game.
But back bounced Mahomes and KC as they lifted the Vince Lombardi trophy a year later, a stunning run to the Super Bowl that saw them overcome the Houston Texans 51-31 (having trailed 24-0 in the second quarter) in the divisional round, and the Tennessee Titans 35-24 (after being behind 17-7 in the second period) in the AFC title game.
They saved their best and most dramatic comeback of all to the big game itself, however, as the Chiefs were 20-10 down to the San Francisco 49ers midway through the fourth quarter.
Mahomes was struggling. At the point at which he threw his second interception of the game, he had completed just 17 of 28 passes for 166 yards and those two picks. But then, backed up facing a 3rd-and-15 from their own 35-yard line, with just over seven minutes to play, Mahomes found Hill for a memorable 44-yard completion deep down the field.
Less than a minute later, he had his first touchdown of the game (finding Kelce in the endzone) for the first of three Kansas City scores in the space of five minutes as they sensationally won the game 31-20, with their star QB named MVP.
Mahomes couldn't engineer an epic comeback of similar proportions when back in the Super Bowl a year later, as Brady, now with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, ran out convincing 31-9 winners last February. Though not for the want of trying on Mahomes' part who, despite playing banged up with an ankle injury and finding himself under constant pressure from a ferocious Tampa Bay pass rush, was still flinging incredible, logic-defying throws - including one which was delivered, on the money, while in mid-air falling to the ground.
Mahomes and the Chiefs are desperate to right the wrongs of a year ago and once again get back to the Super Bowl. But, standing in their way are the Cincinnati Bengals and, if this team are indeed like a "dragon that is so hard to slay", then their quarterback Joe Burrow certainly fits the mould of the league's latest 'prince' to take on the challenge.
Burrow is only in his second year in the NFL, but has been on a remarkable run down the stretch to see Cincinnati into their first Championship game since the 1988 season! In his last four games (all wins), Burrow has averaged 390.75 passing yards per game, tossing 10 touchdowns over that span - and that includes a 446-yard and four-TD display in downing these very Chiefs in Week 17.
Burrow is the latest in a long line of an exciting, young crop of quarterbacks in the AFC that have had tried to usurp Mahomes and the Chiefs as top dogs in the conference - the likes of Allen, Lamar Jackson, Justin Herbert and Baker Mayfield among the other.
Before the season, Mahomes had made light work of his counterparts, with a head-to-head record reading 11-1 from his 12 career starts (including playoffs) against quarterbacks in the conference aged 26 and like him. But this year, cracks began to show as Jackson, Allen and Herbert all earned first career wins over Mahomes in the space of three weeks, with the Chiefs stumbling out to a 3-4 start to the season.
Mahomes served up nine interceptions in those error-strewn early weeks, but he has been picked off only five times in his 12 outings since. The Chiefs had a spell in which they failed to put up more than 20 points of offense in five out of seven games between Weeks 5 and 11.
But, in their last five outings, the lowest points tally returned by Kansas City was the 28 they put up in Week 18 against the Denver Broncos. And, as Allen and the Bills found out to their detriment last Sunday, this Chiefs team is a different one to that which they finally conquered in Week Five.
That dramatic victory once again ensured that, in the AFC, the road to the Super Bowl runs through Kansas City. If the Bengals wish to make it to SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles on February 13, they must first slay this dragon.
The NFL playoffs continue this weekend when the Kansas City Chiefs host the Cincinnati Bengals in the AFC Championship game live on Sky Sports NFL from 8pm Sunday, followed immediately after by the San Francisco 49ers at the Los Angeles Rams in the NFC Championship game at SoFi Stadium.
