The game is just too slow for him. He can make any play he wants, he never panics, he never gets rattled. We were down 20-10 in the fourth quarter, and he routed off 21 points. That kid is special,” Terrell Suggs, Chiefs Defensive End on Mahomes.

Chiefs trailed Niners 10-20 after three quarters, but a Patrick Mahomes show was inevitable. With his first Super Bowl ring now secured, the question is how many more.

Generational talent

Son of former Major League Baseball pitcher Pat Mahomes Sr, Junior — a top prospect for the 2014 MLB draft — could have easily taken the mound too. He chose football, and NFL’s all the richer for it. In essentially his second season (Mahomes got one game in 2017), the 24-year-old became the youngest Super Bowl MVP on Sunday, one year after he had become the youngest league MVP. He had an erratic 3/4th of the game but nobody dared rule out the league’s best quarterback (along with Baltimore Ravens’ Lamar Jackson). Speaking of, what exactly makes…

…A quarterback?

A quarterback can never be flawless. Not even Tom Brady, he of eternal youth and six Super Bowl rings, made every pass on those manic Sunday nights. Rest of the team is responsible for their own actions. A quarterback, the leader of men, has to orchestrate and oversee every play. Relying on a concoction of arm strength, accuracy, speed, dexterity, rapid visual processing and decision making, a quarterback has to figure out the best course of action to drive his team up field within seconds — all while the 6’5, 120kg pass rushers — paid millions a year to flatten a quarterback — hulking after him. Mahomes is 6’3, the average but not the ideal height for a quarterback. But it’s his quick offensive play and the ultrafast receivers that have helped the Chiefs excel.

Turnarounds

What would have been a great escape for many was a routine prison break for Mahomes, and he had pulled off two coming into Sunday’s final. In the first post-season game against the Houston Texans, Chiefs fell behind by 23-0 and won 51-31. In the AFC (American Football Conference) championship game against the Tennessee Titans, the Chiefs were down 17-7 before winning 35-24. After completing the trifecta on Sunday, Kansas City became the first NFL team to overturn a 10-point (or more) deficit in three different games during the same postseason.

Spare a thought

The numbers must have been flashing hard for Niners’ coach Kyle Shanahan: ‘28-3’. That was the lead his Atlanta Falcons blew three years ago as Brady’s Patriots architected the largest comeback ever.

His father Mike was the offensive co-ordinator in the San Francisco 49ers 1995 Super Bowl win and head coach for the Denver Broncos’ 1998 and 1999 wins. Following in his father’s footsteps and becoming the first father and son Super Bowl champion coach duo remains a dream for now. “Those guys are hurting in there, just like I am,” Shanahan said. “It’s tough when you lose a Super Bowl… It’s tough that it had to end today in the way it did.”

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