Patrick Mahomes wasn’t looking around the Chiefs locker room, trying to identify accomplices. The Chiefs had just dropped the AFC Championship game 27-24 to the Bengals, somehow blowing an 18-point lead when they spent most of a half looking like an unbeatable superteam. It was a genuine team effort.
Not to Mahomes.
“I’ve got to be better,” Mahomes said, maybe half an hour after the Chiefs’ season had ended so suddenly and so shockingly. “We were up 21-3. We have to win that game. I put that on myself.”
For the first 29 minutes and 50 or so seconds of the game it seemed impossible Mahomes would be talking that way. He threw for three touchdowns and over 200 yards, and then had them knocking once more at the doorstep, first-and-goal at the Cincinnati 1 with nine seconds left and no timeouts.
After throwing incomplete, Mahomes tried a short dump-off pass to Tyreek Hill short of the goal line when the prudent play would’ve been to throw it away and take a field goal — three points that would’ve been useful by the end of regulation.
“That was my fault,” Chiefs coach Andy Reid said. “I should’ve called a better play right there.”
But Mahomes wasn’t buying that, either.
“I knew we needed to get points,” he said. “I got a little greedy there. In the long run of things it looks bad. If I had another chance I’d have made another play.”
Equally surprising was how inept the Chiefs’ offense looked in the second half after looking downright unstoppable in the first. Their only points came with no time on the clock, Harrison Butker’s 44-yard field goal sending the game into overtime — but only after Mahomes and company had somehow botched first-and-goal from the 5, with a chance to win in regulation.
“When you’re playing a good team and don’t hit what’s there and try to take more than is necessary it’ll bite you in the butt,” Mahomes said. “We were off a tick, that’s enough to make you lose a football game.”
Mahomes finished 26-for-39 for 275 yards. But both his interceptions led to Bengals touchdowns — the first one tying the game at 21-21, the last one ending the Chiefs’ lone possession in OT. He was also sacked four times in the second half, surprising given how well his legs carried him a week ago against the Bills.
“They had a spy on me,” Mahomes said. “They had a good game plan, and we were getting a lot of similar things as we did in the first half. But we were executing at a higher level then than we did later on.”