Mahomes leads the way with legs, arm

KANSAS CITY, MO. >> Patrick Mahomes was just trying to run out of bounds, not make the kind of shakeyour-head, what-did-hejust-do play that will be shown on highlight reels for as long as the Chiefs are in existence.

It was late in the second quarter of the AFC championship game, and the Chiefs were trailing Tennessee, 17-14. Mahomes had already marched them nearly the length of the field, giving Kansas City at worst a chance for a tying field goal, when he scrambled from the pocket and headed toward the sideline with every intention of avoiding any kind of hit.

Then he made a defender miss and saw nobody in front of him, so he turned upfield instead. Mahomes barreled toward the goal line and right over one defender, then spun away from two more, and crashed into the end zone for the go-ahead score.

The momentum of his TD run would spur the Chiefs to two more fourthquarter touchdowns and a 35-24 victory, and into their first Super Bowl in 50 years. And the play itself showcased why defending Mahomes is so difficult: Even when his pass catchers are covered, the young quarterback can still beat opponents on the ground.

“They have the ultimate respect for him,” Chiefs coach Andy Reid said of defenses, “and they’re doubling our guys. You’re not just getting one guy double but two, and the defensive line is trying to sack him. So if he makes one guy miss, it’s over. He has all this running space. We’ve seen that the last couple weeks. For him to be able to see it, decipher it and go

— it’s just part of the game for him. You don’t have to tell him anything that he doesn’t already know.”

Except maybe to slide. That has been a work in progress, and Mahomes has been much more savvy about getting down before taking a big hit. But he wasn’t going to do that last Sunday, when a trio of Titans were all that stood between Mahomes and the end zone after a 27-yard highlight-reel scramble.

“As I got to the sideline,” he recalled last week, “I realized I could cut up. I was running down the sideline and I knew we had two timeouts, so I might as well try to cut it back. I cut it back, and luckily I was able to hold on to the ball and get into the end zone.”

It was the kind of improvisational play that could come in handy against the 49ers’ stingy defense in the Super Bowl, and the kind of play that Mahomes might not have been able to make for much of this season.

The reigning league MVP sprained his ankle in a season-opening win at Jacksonville, and that caused him to hobble a bit for the next few weeks. Then in Week 7, on a benign quarterback sneak, Mahomes dislocated his kneecap and missed the rest of that game and the next two.

And when he returned, he still wasn’t close to 100 percent.

But the Chiefs’ bye this season didn’t come until Week 12, and that turned out to be fortuitous.