Four turnovers still not enough to stop Chiefs
Patrick Mahomes was confused and running for his life. He was facing pressure from every direction and throwing the ball away to the Miami Dolphins defense. Put most simply: He was human.
It’s something not every defense can make the superstar seem.
He is, without much debate, the best quarterback in the league and the best player on the reigning Super Bowl champions, and the Dolphins turned him into a liability for the Kansas City Chiefs for most of the first half of their eventual 33-27 win at Hard Rock Stadium.
And then it happened. A nine-play, 75-yard touchdown drive in a little more than two minutes. A 44-yard touchdown pass from Patrick Mahomes to Tyreek Hill. Finally, a 67yard punt-return touchdown by Mecole Hardman.
A four-point lead flipped into an 18-point deficit in all of 2:49. The Chiefs happened.
“This is an explosive team,” coach Brian Flores said. “They go on runs. They went on one there.”
In a three-minute stretch running from the end of the second quarter into the early moments of the third, Miami’s lead turned into an insurmountable deficit.
First, Mahomes found star tight end Travis Kelce for a short touchdown with 37 seconds left in the first half, then he hit Hill for a 44-yard bomb just 1:10 into the second half.
After Kansas City forced the Dolphins to go threeand-out on their first drive of the half, Hardman ran back the punt with 12:48 left in the third quarter.
It stained another otherwise excellent performance for Miami’s elite defense. For the first 29:23, the Dolphins (8-5) held the Chiefs (12-1) to just seven points. After the 18-point outburst, Miami’s defense held Kansas City to just three the rest of the way.
Mahomes, who had two interceptions all season, had three Sunday and the Dolphins also recovered a fumble. In the first quarter, Miami dragged down Mahomes for a 30-yard sack — the longest since 2015 — and dropped him two more times.
Tua Tagovailoa, who threw for 316 yards and accounted for three touchdowns, outplayed Mahomes and it was mostly because of the Dolphins defense.
“It’s fun to see our defense get a lot of turnovers like that,” star cornerback Byron Jones said.
The last quarter Mahomes played at Hard
Rock Stadium before this weekend might have been the best of his career, carrying the Chiefs to a comeback in Super Bowl 54. The first he played there Sunday might have been his worst.
It started with an interception — an ill-advised decision to force a tunnel screen into a crowd, and linebacker Andrew Van Ginkel batted the quarterback’s pass into the air for Jones to grab.
Mahomes’ next drive began with a fumbled snap and ended with the astonishing 30-yard sack. The quarterback felt pressure from both sides, backed up and tried to spin to his left to escape.
He wound up at his own 3-yard line and couldn’t outrun linebacker Jerome Backer, who grabbed him by the ankle to trip him and force Kansas City to punt from its own end zone.
Finally, there was another pick. The Chiefs were cruising after a 37-yard catch by Chiefs wide receiver Sammy Watkins and then Mahomes stalled them. He sailed a pass over star running back Clyde Edwards-Helaire’s head and directly to safety Eric Rowe.
Miami’s defense is the best Mahomes has faced all season and it forced him into one of his worst games of the season.
“The turnovers were good. I think we played well in spurts,” Flores said, “but against a team like that, one missed alignment, one missed communication and then they take advantage. That was the case today.”
Even at his most discombobulated, Mahomes can finish with lines like the one he had Sunday: 24 of 34, 393 yards, two touchdowns and three interceptions.
There’s always a run waiting for these Chiefs and it came in the second quarter until the game was nearly out of hand with Kansas City ahead 30-10 after a safety with 6:52 left in the third.
In the fourth quarter, cornerback Xavien Howard punctuated the defensive effort by making a onehanded interception in the end zone to pull a touchdown away from Hill.
Later in the fourth, the Chiefs punctuated their offensive effort. On fourthand-1 at Miami’s 40, Mahomes threw to Hill in the flat and the star wide receiver turned it into an 18-yard gain. Kansas City moved into field-goal range and stretched its lead to 33-24 with 1:08 left.
“It’s just the easy stuff. They’re a good offense, no question about that,” Jones said, “but coming into this game we wanted to make them earn it and I think we just gave up too many easy plays.”