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GLENDALE, Ariz. — On Thursday night time, Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs received his second N.F.L. Most Worthwhile Participant Award, cementing him as essentially the most completed passer of a brand new crop of younger quarterbacks dominating the league. Three days later, he added the second Tremendous Bowl victory of his profession, throwing for 182 yards and three touchdowns to beat the Philadelphia Eagles, 38-35.
The sport concluded a tumultuous season for the N.F.L. through which Buffalo Payments security Damar Hamlin collapsed on the sector from a cardiac arrest throughout a sport and high-profile hits to Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa renewed criticisms of how the league handles gamers’ well being, particularly concussions.
Mahomes fought by way of the playoffs with an harm of his personal, a excessive ankle sprain sustained within the divisional spherical final month that was aggravated within the second quarter Sunday.
Philadelphia dominated the primary half. But, with Kansas Metropolis going through a 10-point deficit to start the third quarter, Mahomes marshaled a resilient efficiency in a sport noteworthy for pitting him in opposition to one other emergent passer, Jalen Hurts, within the first Tremendous Bowl contested between two Black beginning quarterbacks.
Ultimately, Mahomes additional enshrined himself because the face of the league as he embraced teammates beneath cascading purple and gold confetti, particularly after the seven-time champion Tom Brady retired (for good, he mentioned) 11 days earlier than the Tremendous Bowl.
Like Brady, Mahomes delivered an exciting comeback, this time, from a 10-point second-half deficit, which earned him sport M.V.P. honors.
“To be right down to a staff like that and are available again and win the sport,” Mahomes mentioned, “I want I’d make it simpler and never be down, however I play higher once we are down.”
With simply over one minute left within the first half and Kansas Metropolis trailing by 21-14, Mahomes scrambled exterior the pocket however Eagles linebacker T.J. Edwards tackled him by his proper ankle. Mahomes had injured that ankle Jan. 21 in opposition to the Jacksonville Jaguars, and had been compromised for the A.F.C. championship sport in opposition to the Cincinnati Bengals the following week.
Mahomes mentioned his harm rehabilitation had gone effectively main into Sunday’s sport, however after the Edwards deal with he lay on the bottom for a couple of moments earlier than limping to the sideline. Kansas Metropolis punted on the drive, resulting in an Eagles subject objective that prolonged their result in 24-14. As Mahomes reached the bench, he took off his helmet and grimaced in misery. Till that time, he had thrown for 89 yards, together with a 18-yard landing cross to the star tight finish Travis Kelce within the first quarter.
Mahomes mentioned in a postgame information convention that he didn’t obtain a painkilling injection from trainers within the locker room throughout halftime, however “did some stuff to get it prepared,” together with taping the ankle.
“He grew up in a locker room,” Coach Andy Reid mentioned of Mahomes, whose father, Pat, performed Main League Baseball for 11 seasons. “He’s seen the greats and he strives to be the best. With out saying something, that’s the best way he works. He needs to be the best participant ever.”
Within the first half, Hurts had appeared to personal the second, propelling the Eagles with scoring runs of 1 and 4 yards and a 45-yard landing cross to A.J. Brown at the beginning of the second quarter. Since being acquired through an low season commerce with the Tennessee Titans, Brown had bolstered the Eagles’ offense and have become a main goal of Hurts. He caught 11 landing passes — half the scores Hurts threw — within the common season and, on Sunday, caught six passes for 96 yards.
Their pairing had helped Hurts turn into one of many league’s greatest quarterbacks in his third season and second because the full-time starter. Hurts’s one mistake Sunday got here with just below 10 minutes remaining within the first half, when he fumbled and Kansas Metropolis linebacker Nick Bolton returned it 36 yards for a landing, tying the rating at 14 after the additional level.
“You by no means know what play it is going to be, however it harm us,” mentioned Hurts, who completed with 304 passing yards and 4 touchdowns. He set a report for many speeding yards by a quarterback within the Tremendous Bowl, with 70. “You look again and also you replicate on the issues perhaps you possibly can have carried out one thing extra, perhaps you possibly can have tried to carried out one thing that would change the end result of the sport and that’s the best way it was.”
Whereas Hurts’s staff added a star receiver earlier than the season who ended up enjoying a key function in a Tremendous Bowl run, Mahomes noticed a high goal, the speedy Tyreek Hill, traded to Miami. With the additions of Marquez Valdes-Scantling and JuJu Smith-Schuster in free company, Mahomes tailored his model to search for shorter throws, which proved efficient all through the season and helped gasoline Kansas Metropolis within the second half Sunday.
On the primary drive after halftime, Mahomes returned to the big-game daring that’s his calling card. The rookie working again Isiah Pacheco and the undersized veteran again Jerick McKinnon ignited the offense with quick bursts earlier than Mahomes examined that ankle by scrambling for a 14-yard achieve on a second down within the purple zone to increase the sequence. The scamper appeared to embolden Mahomes in opposition to the Eagles’ stout protection earlier than Pacheco ran in a 1-yard rating to slender Philadelphia’s result in 3 factors.
The Eagles responded with a 17-play drive that ended when Jake Elliott kicked a 33-yard subject objective to present Philadelphia a 27-21 lead late within the third quarter.
With 12 minutes remaining within the sport, Mahomes orchestrated a nine-play, 75-yard drive that concluded with a 5-yard landing cross to Kadarius Toney to take a 28-27 lead.
Kansas Metropolis’s protection pressured the Eagles to punt with simply over 10 minutes remaining, and Toney collected the ball and wove by way of Philadelphia’s protection staff down the proper sideline for a 65-yard achieve, the longest punt return in Tremendous Bowl historical past. Three performs later, Mahomes threw a 4-yard landing to the rookie Skyy Moore to present Kansas Metropolis a 35-27 lead with simply over 9 minutes remaining.
Hurts battled again, connecting with DeVonta Smith on a 46-yard cross to arrange a landing on the sequence. Hurts carried in a 2-yard run, his third landing carry, earlier than punching in a 2-point conversion that tied the sport at 35-35 with simply over 5 minutes remaining.
“To me, Jalen performed one of the best sport I’ve seen him play within the two years that we’ve been collectively,” Eagles Coach Nick Sirianni mentioned. “He was excellent. I actually thought he was in full management.”
The back-and-forth affair exemplified the symmetry and parallels between the 2 groups. Maybe fittingly, each coaches, every tried to beat groups that after employed them.
Reid coached the Eagles from 1999 to 2012, and led the staff to a Tremendous Bowl berth within the 2004 season. However the Eagles proprietor Jeffrey Lurie fired Reid after the staff posted a 4-12 report in 2012, the worst marketing campaign in Reid’s tenure. Reid joined Kansas Metropolis simply days afterward and, as a part of putting in a brand new employees, fired Sirianni, then the receivers coach.
However since buying and selling as much as choose Mahomes within the first spherical of the 2017 N.F.L. draft, Kansas Metropolis has created a dynasty. Since changing into the full-time stater in 2018, Mahomes has appeared in 5 consecutive A.F.C. championship video games and three of the final 4 Tremendous Bowls.
The Eagles decided a lot of the tempo of Sunday’s sport, possessing the ball practically 12 minutes longer than the Chiefs did. However on Kansas Metropolis’s ultimate drive, Mahomes managed the clock with quick passes earlier than breaking by way of with a 26-yard run to place Kansas Metropolis contained in the purple zone with just a little over two minutes remaining. The Eagles’ protection, which amassed 70 sacks through the common season, didn’t report a single sack of Mahomes within the sport.
Philadelphia’s protection held Pacheco to a 2-yard achieve on the following play, and Mahomes’s subsequent cross to Smith-Schuster fell incomplete. Going through third-and-8, Mahomes once more focused Smith-Schuster with a brief throw however cornerback James Bradberry was known as for defensive holding on the play, a penalty which gave Kansas Metropolis a brand new set of downs.
“It was a holding,” Bradberry mentioned of the pivotal infraction. “I tugged his jersey. I hoped they,” the sport officers, “would let it slide.”
McKinnon discovered daylight on a first-down run from the Eagles’ 11-yard line and will have scored however tiptoed to the 2-yard line the place he stopped quick to maintain the clock working and drive the Eagles to make use of their ultimate timeouts. Mahomes knelt on the following two downs earlier than Harrison Butker kicked a 27-yard subject objective to offer the ultimate rating.
Within the locker room after the sport, as Kansas Metropolis’s gamers sparked cigars and sprayed champagne, Mahomes unwrapped a championship wrestling belt, one other award in a rising assortment.
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