[dirk digler]

Long but here is some highlights

https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2024/2...ers-super-bowl

This was supposed to be the bad Mahomes year, and it ended the same way the good ones did: with the Chiefs on top. This was their worst, and it was better than everyone else’s best.

It’s very irritating that the Kansas City Chiefs played in this Super Bowl. It’s also very impressive and incredible and enjoyable, but that doesn’t stop it from being irritating. The Chiefs were a painfully flawed team all season—not a team with minor weaknesses or unfortunate injuries, but a team with real problems that should have been exposed by a better playoff contender.

Only that never happened. Patrick Mahomes simply did not allow it.

When you think of Mahomes, you think of greatness—great throws, great moments. And when you think of the imperfect Chiefs team he captained to their third Super Bowl win in just six seasons, you conjure greatness again in your mind. Mahomes must have been spectacular, sensational, his play riddled with the superhuman throws that will one day adorn his Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

But that was not the story of this game. This Mahomes Super Bowl MVP award, the third of his still young career, was not about greatness; it was about plainness. It was about how he changed the way he quarterbacked—and in doing so, saved the Chiefs.

Mahomes makes these plays so routinely, they almost become uninteresting. But if this was always in his bag, why did the Chiefs stumble this season? These astonishing plays had always been enough for the Chiefs to overwhelm their opponents—why weren’t they now?

Miscues. Self-inflicted wounds. The exact stuff the 49ers are lamenting on the other side of this loss. No other team dropped more passes this season than the Chiefs did. Their mistakes always came at the worst times—Skyy Moore’s drop in the end zone against Denver. Marquez Valdes-Scantling letting the Eagles game slip through his fingers. The infamous Kadarius Toney offside against Buffalo. Kansas City tripped its way to Las Vegas for Super Bowl LVIII, and it wasn’t going to stop now.

On the season, Mahomes wasn’t as sloppy as his teammates. Sure, he’d throw a pick here and there—but he’s a reckless guy. What do you expect?

While he wasn’t sloppy, the weight of the offensive struggles were too much even for him to overcome. The 2023 season was Mahomes’s worst by EPA per dropback, success rate, and adjusted net yards per attempt—all by a comfortable margin. He was pressured more this season than in any season since 2018, and he was worse when pressured than he had ever been. His explosive play rate has never been lower; his air yards per attempt has never been lower; his time to throw has never been higher. By every metric, this was the hardest season of Mahomes’s career. His worst season in the NFL.

Oh, except for the Super Bowl win. And the Super Bowl MVP. By those metrics, this season was just about as good as his other ones.

It’s not that Mahomes got worse at football, or that Mahomes was solved. It was everything around him that was the issue. Kelce, 34 years old, wasn’t moving as quickly as he used to, producing after the catch like he used to. Besides Rashee Rice, all the swings at receiver missed; the turnover at offensive tackle hurt the team as well. Mahomes could still go supernova, but the Chiefs were rarely able to harness his power. His pocket escapes became meager scrambles instead of downfield shots; his accurate throws, incompletions.

If the Chiefs couldn’t field the same offense they once did, they’d need something else. Andy Reid and the Chiefs’ coaching staff initiated a tactical retreat. The Chiefs started throwing the ball underneath a ton, relying more on yards after the catch. They eschewed the tight downfield windows forced by defenses fearful of Mahomes’s arm and instead targeted open underneath receivers—nobody else threw into an open window more frequently than Mahomes did in 2023.

The result? Drives with far fewer highlights, but with actual points at the end. It took time for Mahomes and Reid to find the gaps in a 49ers defense that put forth a Super Bowl–worthy effort, flowing fast to the football, tackling in space—but eventually, the herald of the quarterbacking revolution settled into his pedestrian role. Mahomes threw it underneath, time and time again, succinctly turning the offense into the hands of an open receiver, trusting some of the same targets that had often betrayed him. In the fourth quarter and overtime, he averaged 4.9 air yards per attempt. He was 16-for-22, with a success rate of 58 percent. He was trailing for the entirety of his three drives, and he threw beyond the sticks exactly six times. Those were the game-winning drives from the NFL’s best game winner: methodical, not maniacal. Somehow, just as merciless.