The Mahomes Effect grows by adaptation as Chiefs reach 4th Super Bowl in 5 years

Some day this mesmerizing magical mystery tour the Chiefs somehow keep adding dates to will fade out or burst or otherwise disappear.

But for the foreseeable future, anyway, the only thing inevitable is Patrick Mahomes and his indomitable will — a force of various shapes and dimensions that all contour to one destination:

Winning.

To be sure, Mahomes hardly was the only reason the Chiefs on Sunday beat favored Baltimore 17-10 to advance to their fourth Super Bowl in five years and sustain their hopes of becoming the first NFL team to repeat as champion in nearly two decades.

In fact, nothing mattered more than the defense that stifled another of the league’s top offenses and generated three turnovers. That was primarily why a day that was supposedly to be about some sort of succession from Mahomes to Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson instead was about the Lamar Hunt Trophy staying in the hands of the franchise Hunt founded.

But the game still reiterated how everything has changed for the Chiefs, and, really, Kansas City, since the advent of Mahomes.

And why it’s not wise, as general manager Brett Veach put it afterward, “to poke the bear” with doubts or slights about him or his team after a regular season marked by a dramatic reduction in points scored and criticism of a receiving corps that led the league in dropped passes.

Doubt at your own peril, especially since Mahomes seems to have an internal mechanism that converts it to fuel that he’s learned to harness in new ways.

Through Mahomes’ instant rise to the top of the NFL when he took over in 2018 and the annual tweaks and iterations, the most recent of which we’ll come right back to, the Chiefs now are 14-3 in the postseason in games he’s played.

Only Tom Brady (35) and Joe Montana (16) have had their name on the ledger for more playoff wins than the 28-year-old Mahomes, who owns the best quarterback rating in postseason history.

When I asked Veach on Sunday about the constant in this equation that Mahomes has provided, Veach at first was at a rare loss for words.

“You can’t describe it. He’s a legend,” he said. “I mean, it’s a blessing that he’s part of this organization. And he’s the best.”

A moment later, he spoke to the essence of Mahomes’ presence for not just the organization but for millions of Chiefs fans over the decades: “He gives everyone that belief and hope that it doesn’t matter what the odds are, where we’re playing, where we’re going. If we have 15 under center, we have a shot.”

For that matter, it seems evident that the Mahomes Effect is invasive across the field.

By now, he has to lurk in the heads of Buffalo, which is 0-3 against Mahomes in the postseason including the instance 13-second game and last week’s 27-24 loss. And you can bet there was a psychological onus on the Ravens after Mahomes calmly and flawlessly drove the Chiefs 86 and 75 yards for touchdowns on their first two drives.

The statement sequence featured a terrific Travis Kelce touchdown catch and Mahomes’ whirlaway scramble for another in the uncanny ad-lib catalog to Kelce to set up an Isiah Pacheco TD run.

As he tried to describe the challenge of containing Mahomes, Baltimore linebacker Patrick Queen thought about the way Mahomes not only can make all the throws but also has the confounding ability to buy time. For all the emphasis the Ravens put on limiting that, he added, “There were times when he just did what he does.”

There’s a certain sense of resignation in those words, though Chiefs receiver Rashee Rice put the dynamic more bluntly: “Punched a bully in the face. A bully’s never been punched in the face before.”

Sandwiched in between that start and the late 32-yard pass to Marquez Valdes-Scantling that sealed the outcome was the more practical-than-spectacular version of Mahomes — a mindset that goes against every impulse he has but vital to the complementary football the Chiefs have learned to play because of their commanding defense.

“Whenever they’re rolling like that, I have to kind of manage my game,” said Mahomes, who completed 30 of 39 passes for 241 yards. “That’s stuff that I’ve learned throughout the season.

“Even if we’re not having the success that I want to have, (if the) defense is rolling and getting stops, let’s just take the safe choice, get the ball out of my hand, don’t turn the ball over and go win the football game.”

So while the Ravens were losing one fumble into the end zone and Jackson inexplicably launched into triple coverage in the end zone what would become his second interception of the game, Mahomes was operating in safe mode.

Enough so that after the game Chiefs coach Andy Reid lauded Mahomes not just for the 11 straight completions to open the game — “that’s something special” — but for how he managed it afterward.

In fact, Reid praised Mahomes for having the presence of mind to … take a sack with the Chiefs leading 17-7 approaching six minutes left in the fourth quarter.

That compelled the Ravens to take their first time out with 5 minutes 55 seconds to go and ultimately left the Chiefs needing just one first down to put it away after Baltimore closed it to 17-10 with 2:38 left.

“Kind of thrown by the side is him taking a sack there at the end as opposed to trying to fit the ball in,” Reid said. “He took the sack, kept the clock running. Good things happened there at that particular time.”

And about ever since that particular time when the Chiefs engineered a trade with the Bears to draft Mahomes 10th overall in 2017. Since his year as an understudy to Alex Smith, Mahomes has led the Chiefs to six AFC Championship Game appearances, twice been the NFL MVP and twice been the Super Bowl MVP.

Enhancing that all the more is that he’s an admirable and amiable ambassador for Kansas City.

We’ve written this before, but it bears mention again: Chiefs fans might well love him even if he were a jerk. But he’s all the more appealing to embrace as the face of the city because he’s fundamentally decent, deeply engaged in the community (including as an investor with the KC Current, Royals and Sporting KC) and again is representing the Chiefs as their Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year candidate for charitable work with his “15 and the Mahomies” foundation.

Even in the middle of the celebration on stage Sunday night, Mahomes in his brief remarks made it a point to acknowledge the late Norma Hunt, Lamar’s widow revered as the First Lady of the Chiefs and known for having attended every Super Bowl.

After her death last June, the Chiefs honored her this season by wearing a patch bearing her initials — a patch that Mahomes referred to as he held the trophy and looked toward owner Clark Hunt.

The six straight AFC Championships and Super Bowl and third Super Bowl berth, Hunt said later, “tell you all you need to know about him as a player. But he’s also a special person.”

Turning toward Mahomes seated nearby, Hunt was emotional when he added, “I appreciate him giving a shoutout to my mom on the stage tonight.”

Afterward, Mahomes expressed his own appreciation for this phenomenon that will make for his legacy — or at least the start of it.

“You don’t take it for granted, either,” he said. “You never know how many you’re going to get to or if you’re going to get to any. So it truly is special.”

Yet somehow nothing but inevitable these last few years. Even with a path rerouted this time out of necessity but enabled by adaptation — and by no one more than Mahomes.