Super Bowl: Never bet against Patrick Mahomes and Kansas City
Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes looks to pass during the second half of the AFC Championship Game against the Ravens on Jan. 28 in Baltimore. Credit: AP/Matt Slocum
LAS VEGAS
There is no one more associated with the 49ers, and with their success, than Joe Montana. He is the icon of the franchise, a living allegory for the red and gold, and his four Super Bowl titles in the 1980s made him (temporarily, it turns out) the greatest quarterback in NFL history.
So you’d think he’d have nothing but love and optimism for his former team as it prepares to play in Super Bowl LVIII.
But Montana also is a realist. He knows what it means when a team has the kind of player who carries an air of invincibility, the confidence of past success and the unremitting faith of the entire organization. He knows it because he used to be one of those himself and he can recognize it in others.
So while he is rooting for the 49ers and hoping for the 49ers and would be thrilled if the 49ers win, there is something that won’t allow him to predict that victory.
“They have this thing called Patrick Mahomes,” Montana practically sighed on Radio Row when asked to break down the matchup between San Francisco and Kansas City. “Any time he’s around, nothing else matters.”
In this mostly free-wheeling town where just about anything goes, where, as the song says, there’s “a fortune won and lost on every deal,” there are any number of ways to go bankrupt. Foolish plays such as splitting 10s in blackjack, making field bets in craps or going anywhere near the keno table for any reason are surefire paths to ruin.
This week, add another to the list of doom:
Never bet against Mahomes.
If the last year hasn’t taught all of us that, then we haven’t been paying attention.
Right here in this very space 52 Sundays ago was an explainer on all the reasons why the Eagles would win Super Bowl LVII with (thankfully for this writer’s gossamer credibility) a caveat that if Mahomes, bum ankle and all, had a chance to win the game late, he would. Then he did. That should have been the first lesson regarding underselling him and his team.
Fast-forward to September, and the entire regular season was basically a test of discipline for those trying not to doubt the game’s top quarterback, suddenly cloaked in mediocrity. Each week he’d give us another reason to jump ship, to find someone else to become the face of the league, to wonder how he could craft another Super Bowl run with the scraps of receiver talent he was given. Even his old reliable, Travis Kelce, seemed to have half his mind on, um, other things.
Mahomes lost the opener to the Lions. He barely beat the Jets and Zach Wilson. He lost his cool at the officials when Kadarius Toney lined up offside and was flagged for it to negate the best play of the season. On Christmas Day, he lost to the Raiders, 20-14.
It was all a setup, though. A con. Because Mahomes and Kansas City haven’t lost since.
They won their final two regular-season games. Then they beat a Dolphins team that had scored 70 points in a game earlier in the season and a month earlier had looked Super Bowl-ready. They went to Buffalo, where Mahomes won his first road playoff game by besting Josh Allen and surviving a late field-goal attempt. Then they traveled to Baltimore, where he and his defensive brethren showed the league’s MVP the true meaning of valuable.
And now he’s here, in Las Vegas, in his fourth Super Bowl in five seasons, with two titles already on his resume, and we’re expected to believe that his team is getting 1 1⁄2 points from the 49ers in the sportsbooks with whom the NFL suddenly is so chummy?
“I understand why we’re the underdog, I get that. We had some ups and downs during the season,” Kansas City coach Andy Reid said on Thursday in his final news conference before the game.
But then he added: “I never feel like an underdog going into a game.”
He’s got Mahomes.
Why would he?
Check this out: Mahomes is 9-3 as an underdog in his career, giving him the best winning percentage of any quarterback with a minimum of 10 starts in such circumstances — playoffs included — in the past 15 seasons. And the bigger the odds against them, the better Mahomes and Kansas City seem to do.
In the five games in which they have been at least a 3 1⁄2- point underdog since Mahomes took over as the starting quarterback (think about that for just a second; five games in six seasons when Vegas thought they’d lose by more than a field goal), Kansas City has won four times outright. In the lone loss, a game against Tom Brady and the Patriots in October 2018, they were four-point ’dogs and lost on a late field goal. But they covered.
Mahomes generally has to manufacture slights and disses to drive himself. All the oddsmakers have done this week is give him a concrete one for this game.
“It kind of lit a fire under some guys,” he said of not being favored despite all he has accomplished, “including myself.”
The rest of his teammates seem more bemused than burdened by their status.
“Good,” defensive end George Karlaftis said about the growing sentiment — rational or emotional — against his team and his quarterback in particular. “That’s my one-word answer to the doubters. ‘Good.’ I just say keep doubting him, man. Keep doubting him. He’ll prove you wrong every time.”
Added Kelce: “That’s sports, man. That’s sports. Until you are crowned king, you are going to have those doubters, you are going to have those naysayers. You just have to use it as fuel. You can’t think about it.”
Haters, in other words, are going to . . . well, you know.
It’s not inconceivable that the 49ers will win this game. They have a very sharp head coach, a full house of offensive playmakers with a capable quarterback, and a strong defense that can make the line of scrimmage a miserable place to be. They are a solid team of championship caliber. If you weigh both rosters from one through 53, they may even be the more talented of the two.
But they don’t have Mahomes. Kansas City does. Even Mr. 49er himself, Joe Montana, understands what that means.
In Sin City, where there are Elvis impersonators on just about every corner, the NFL has yet to find anyone who can successfully mimic its own reigning King. Until it does, even rooting against Mahomes feels like a losing proposition.
He’s as close to a sure thing as it gets, both in this town and in this sport.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
