‘You can’t rattle him’
Mahomes’ keen sense of awareness offers 49ers an unenviable task
As one of the few known humans who has ever managed to flummox Patrick Mahomes in a conspicuous setting, Lou Anarumo knows the drill.
The Cincinnati Bengals’ fifth-year defensive coordinator had a pretty good idea of what question he would be asked as soon as he picked up the phone.
Alas, most San Francisco 49ers fans won’t love Anarumo’s answer: There is no magic formula for stopping the NFL’S preeminent quarterback.
“I mean, he’s too great to say that you’re going to fluster a guy like that for an entire game,” Anarumo told me Saturday. “You just have to be able to make the key stops at the right time, and then if he gives you an opportunity with a takeaway, you can’t mess it up; you have to catch (the ball). But he’s Derek Jeter; he’s Tom Brady; he’s Michael Jordan. He’s ‘The Guy.’ And here he is in the Super Bowl — again.”
Mahomes, the Kansas City superstar who broke the Niners’ hearts four years ago in Super Bowl LIV, is back on the sport’s biggest stage, once again standing between San Francisco and a sixth Lombardi Trophy. Mahomes, 28, already has helped his team win two of them and can secure a third for his squad Sunday in Las Vegas when the Chiefs and 49ers meet in Super Bowl LVIII.
For the 49ers and Brock Purdy, it’s sort of like making it to the final round of American Idol — and facing off against Lady Gaga.
It’s not that Mahomes can’t be beaten in a big game; it’s that such an outcome is a rarity, with circumstances that are hard to replicate. The 49ers found that out in February of 2020 when they held a 10-point lead midway through the fourth quarter, only to watch Mahomes complete a 3rd-and-15 deep ball off his back foot and spark a 21-point explosion.
The memory of ‘2-3 Jet Chip Wasp’ still stings in Santa Clara, but Mahomes’ heroics weren’t atypical. In all six of his seasons as Kansas City’s starting quarterback, he has reached the AFC Championship Game — call it the Patrick Mahomes Invitational —
and owns a 14-3 postseason record, including an MVP performance in last February’s dramatic, 38-35 Super Bowl LVII victory over the Philadelphia Eagles.
Other than that, he hasn’t really done much.
Two of Mahomes’ postseason defeats came in overtime: a 37-31 setback in the 2018 season’s AFC title game, with the Chiefs missing a chance to clinch in regulation because Charvarius Ward’s late interception was nullified by a neutral zone penalty against Dee Ford; and a 27-24 loss to the Bengals three years later made possible by Anarumo’s schematic cunning.
Like 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan, Anarumo routinely crafts opponent-specific game plans, constantly changing up fronts and coverages and making Cincy’s alignments tough to predict. He’s also very good at making halftime adjustments — never more so than in that 2021 season’s AFC Championship Game.
After Mahomes went 18-for-21 in the first half, throwing for 220 yards and three touchdowns, Anarumo went to a single-high safety alignment — putting the other safety into the middle of the field to disrupt intermediate routes — and frequently dropped eight defenders into coverage. Mahomes became increasingly confused: In the second half and overtime he was 8-for-18 for 55 yards with no touchdowns and two interceptions, including the one that set up the Bengals’ winning field goal.
It was Mahomes’ third consecutive defeat against Anarumo’s defense, though he has since run his career record against the coordinator to 2-3.
Recalled Anarumo: “We certainly didn’t mess him up the whole game. We just did enough. And then when the opportunities presented themselves we were able to take advantage. But he is great.”
Mahomes, a two-time regular season and Super Bowl MVP, has been neutralized on one other occasion: In the Chiefs’ 31-9 Super Bowl LV defeat to Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers three years ago.
There wasn’t much mystery surrounding the source of that drubbing: Kansas City’s offensive line was decimated by injuries and the Bucs’ defenders harassed Mahomes early and often. Despite a painful toe injury Mahomes used his mobility to try to keep plays alive — according to Nextgen Stats, he ran 497 yards before throwing or getting sacked, the league’s highest total that season — but it was futile.
It was also an aberration. There were numerous occasions during the 2023 regular season when Mahomes and the Chiefs’ vaunted offense looked out of sync, but in three postseason victories (over the Dolphins, Bills and Ravens) he has reminded people that, in the words of 49ers CEO Jed York, he’s “the best player on the planet.” In a conference full of elite QBS with exceptional physical skills (Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow, Josh Allen and Justin Herbert among them), Mahomes consistently prevails in January and February and appears unbothered in the process.
“There’s a fluidity to his play,” Chiefs offensive coordinator Matt Nagy said Saturday while driving home from Arrowhead Stadium. “It’s smooth. It’s not fast. It’s not quick. I don’t know how to explain it. He has a really, really sick awareness level of being able to understand what’s going to happen before it happens.
“Some people have (great) vision, and then they go through the play and they see something happen and they make a guy miss or something. But he makes that happen before it happens. He sets it up when he’s scrambling. He’s playing chess when they’re playing checkers. He knows what you’re going to do before you do it. And you can’t rattle him.”
With the Niners coming off a pair of dubious defensive outings in the playoffs, defensive coordinator Steve Wilks has a massive challenge: Trying to fluster a luminous quarterback who is already being mentioned among the game’s all-time greats — including a legend who led the 49ers to four Super Bowl victories and took the Chiefs to the 1993 AFC Championship Game.
“I mean, he’s like (Joe) Montana, Brady, Peyton (Manning) … all these great QBS,” Anarumo said of Mahomes. “Their heartbeat doesn’t race; it stays the same in key moments. That’s a trait that’s God-given, that you don’t know you have until those moments.
“He just sees the game so well. I think a lot of people say that, but when you’re there on the ground watching it, it’s like, ‘Oh my god, how did he see that guy all the way over there? ’ Anywhere, any place, he can find the guy and get it to him. He’s that guy.”
As for the formula to defeat that guy, well, Anarumo doesn’t put it all on the defense: “I think the key when you play them is being able to match them, so you’re keeping up pace with them. If they’re scoring, you’ve got to score.”
Even then, in a close game, Mahomes usually finds a way to seize the moment. At this point, it’s almost like we take his clutch postseason performances for granted.
“They say, ‘Speak it into existence’; well, he speaks winning into existence,” Nagy said. “And he doesn’t just do it once or twice. He does it all the time.”