getonscoop 
-
Adam Teicher
NEW ORLEANS — Patrick Mahomes said during the week that the most disappointing loss of his career came in Super Bowl LV following the 2020 season, when the Kansas City Chiefs fell to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
That defeat, Mahomes said after the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Chiefs 40-22 in Super Bowl LIX on Sunday night, now has company. Mahomes threw two interceptions — one returned for a touchdown — and lost a fumble as the Eagles built a 40-6 lead midway through the fourth quarter.
Two late Mahomes touchdown passes made the final score more respectable but did nothing to curb his disappointment.
“Both [losses] sucked,” Mahomes said. “There’s no way around it. Anytime you lose a Super Bowl, it is the worst feeling in the world. They’ll stick with you the rest of your career. These will be the two losses that will motivate me to be even better the rest of my career because you only get so few of these and you have to capitalize on these and they hurt probably more than the wins feel good.”
In addition to cornerback Cooper DeJean’s 38-yard interception return for a touchdown, the Eagles scored 10 points off Mahomes’ two other turnovers. The last of those was a fumble that led to a Philadelphia field goal and put the Eagles ahead 40-6.
In part because of Mahomes’ turnovers, the Chiefs produced only 23 yards and one first down by halftime and trailed 24-0.
“I threw a pick-six, and I threw a pick that they returned to the 5-yard line and they scored immediately after,” Mahomes said. “When you give the team 14 points, especially a really good football team, a Super Bowl football team, then not a lot of good things happen.
“I put us in a bad spot. Even though we put up some stats at the end of the game, those stats didn’t really matter because I’d already kind of lost the momentum for this entire team. I have to be better at not turning it over whenever it’s not going my way, trusting my defense, trusting the rest of my team to get those stops until I can figure out what we need to do as an offense.”
The Chiefs went 15-2 in the regular season and advanced to the Super Bowl for the third straight year, but it was a different kind of campaign for Mahomes, who threw for his fewest yards (3,928) in a full season and tied his career low for touchdown passes (26). Through the first seven games, he had more interceptions (nine) than touchdowns (eight), though he threw only two picks the rest of the regular season.
“I feel like I didn’t play to my standard just with the struggles that I had early in this season,” Mahomes said. “There are things that I have to get better at, and they kind of showed today.”
“I’m about to find a way this offseason to combat what defenses are doing to me as far as rush lanes and different coverages that they’re playing,” he added. “That’s the beauty of football is that you never can be satisfied with just coming out there and playing and thinking you’re going to have success year in and year out. These defenses are going to continue to get better and better and so I have to get better.
“I take a lot of ownership in that, and I want to hopefully come back and play better football this next season.”
The Chiefs, after winning the Super Bowl in each of the previous two seasons, failed to become the first team to win three straight. They’ll hope to rebound from a Super Bowl loss next season better than they did in 2021, the season after getting throttled by the Bucs.
The Chiefs advanced to the AFC Championship Game that campaign but lost to the Cincinnati Bengals. That was the last season in which the Chiefs failed to reach the Super Bowl.
“We’ll have to find ways to respond to this adversity,” Mahomes said. “Hopefully, this will motivate these guys, especially myself, to be even better. It’s a short offseason. We have a lot of guys coming back. We’ll have some guys that won’t.
“But we have to get better so that hopefully we get this opportunity again and we can go out there and capitalize on it.”
