Patrick Mahomes Is a legend against Raiders puts the Chiefs back on the easy path to repeat
If the Raiders had any ideas about sweeping the Chiefs this season when they took a three-point lead with 1:43 to play in the fourth quarter Sunday night, they didn't last long. Las Vegas played the best it could on offense and defense to beat Kansas City in Week 11, except for leaving too much time on the clock for Patrick Mahomes.
Mahomes avenged his only loss of 2020, the worst loss of his brilliant young NFL career, with the best series of his career in the fourth quarter. Had he let the Chiefs lose and Derek Carr surpassed them, they would have been looking at a precarious one-game lead in the AFC West. Instead, the division is closed again as KC holds a three-game lead with six games remaining after a 35-31 victory. Along with that, it could also end the AFC championship race and advance the Chiefs' replay in Super Bowl 55.
With all the magic that has quickly filled his resume, that was the first two-minute drill to win the game in Mahomes' career. To be fair, Mahomes is so good for 58 minutes of most games that he doesn't need to pull the Chiefs out of a deficit late. The most impressive part of what he did at the end of week 11 is that he was more methodical than miraculous.
There was never any doubt that Mahomes would a.) Be successful in his final possession and b,) would not settle for a field goal attempt to tie the game. It only took six passing plays in 1:15, with one incomplete and a timeout in the middle, to crush the hopes and dreams of the Raiders. There was nothing strange or spectacular, he just used strikes with his teammates, Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce, to start and finish the march to the end zone.
The Raiders are the ones to wear the silver and black with shades of the Empire, but you can bet that with each dropback from Mahomes, they were surrounded by the sinister tones of the "Imperial March". The other AFC playoff contenders who are trying to unseat the champions had to hear it too.
The Chiefs' defense couldn't stop Carr, who was having the best game of his career (23 of 31 passes, 275 yards, three TDs) at the most critical moment for his team with playoff hopes. The Raiders were doing their best to replicate the ball control and big-pass play formula that allowed them to pull off their shocking 40-32 upset at Arrowhead six weeks earlier. Hell, they even intercepted Mahomes again, the only team to do it this season, in the red zone and before halftime, no less.
The Raiders had some success in zone coverage defense. They had some success with covering men. They had some success with the blitzes. But when Carr hit Jason Witten for the lead score at 1:43, no one on the planet would have bet that Las Vegas would just make the winning play.
The Raiders should have realized that the only way to beat Mahomes is to wait for a mistake. They got one at the end of week 5 and another early in week 11. But the problem is that when Mahomes is having his version of the NFL failure, a minor setback, he comes back doubly dangerous and more focused with his lasers.
Remember when the 49ers defense was holding down Mahomes in Super Bowl 54? They couldn't make that last more than three-quarters. The Texans and Titans are still figuring out how their playoff leaders evaporated so quickly.
Mahomes is taking the phenomenon who became the NFL MVP in Year 2 and the energetic veteran leader of Year 3 and blends them into an entirely different superhuman. He's no longer trying to prove he's the best young quarterback of all time, or much better than any other quarterback right now. You are competing with yourself, almost thriving by creating new challenges that make you smarter.
You can continue to analyze the Chiefs' defensive failures and their sometimes undisciplined play on both sides of the ball. But all of that is moot because they are armed with the ultimate weapon that can defeat anything.
Mahomes' magic against the Raiders came with an underlying message: If you play the Chiefs with him at QB, you would be very lucky to win once and have no chance of winning twice.
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I guess that's a bit of good news for the 10-0 Steelers, who don't have to play the Chiefs until the playoffs. Just as no one thought the Raiders would hold that lead, no one thinks Pittsburgh should be considered the AFC's favorite over Kansas City, despite the records.
Mahomes will be motivated to collect new merit badges in the coming weeks, which is downright scary. You can bet he'll be itching to beat GOAT Tom Brady in Tampa in Week 12 to match the head-to-head record at 2-2. Looking a little further ahead, there's a Week 15 trip to New Orleans to face that other NFC South powerhouse, the Saints, just as Drew Brees is expected to return.
Those games shouldn't sound easy at all, but Mahomes already makes them feel that way, like it's a torch-passing ritual he's supposed to go through to be blessed with more Super Bowl rings. Unfortunately for the Buccaneers or Saints, teams that could get their number during the regular season, you know Mahomes won't lose a possible rematch with much higher stakes.
No NFL team is unbeatable, and the Chiefs' record against the Raiders this season proves it. However, with Mahomes, storybook endings for games like Sunday night and future Super Bowls seem more inevitable, just as LeBron James makes it to the NBA Finals and Brady makes it to the championship games of the AFC.
There are clutch quarterbacks, and then there's Mahomes. He won't let the Chiefs lose a meaningful game the rest of the way in their Super Bowl defense, and he will continue to make it look as easy as M-V-P. The Raiders were the last team to learn that lesson. Now it's just a matter of figuring out who will be last.
