At one point in last season’s AFC Championship Game, Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs led Joe Burrow and the Cincinnati Bengals 21-3 and looked to be heading for a third Super Bowl appearance in the past four years. But a second-half surge from the Bengals and a collapse from the Chiefs left Mahomes with a few regrets.
In an interview with The Ringer, Mahomes revealed that he and his team were “playing not to lose” after they jumped out to a big lead. The former MVP believes that complacency led to the loss.
“The second half of that game: I don’t want to say we relaxed, but I mean when you lead like you did, you want to make sure you win the game, but you don’t want to play like you’re playing not to lose,” Mahomes told The Ringer. “And I feel like that’s what we did. As a team, we were playing not to lose, we were playing just to get to the Super Bowl.”
While Cincinnati made a furious comeback in the second half, Mahomes said that the Bengals weren’t doing anything different on defense to change the game or confuse the Chiefs – they simply executed better.
“If you look, they didn’t do much different from the first half to the second half,” Mahomes said. “We just didn’t execute at a high enough level. They were playing the same coverages and we weren’t executing. Then momentum gets in the other team’s favor and when you’re playing a good football team, bad stuff happens.”
However it happened, the Bengals pulled off the thrilling comeback, notched the overtime victory, and punched a ticket to their first Super Bowl appearance since 1988.
