GLENDALE, Ariz. — Patrick Mahomes was magical when the Kansas City Chiefs desperately needed their star quarterback to pull off another championship comeback.
Playing on an injured ankle, Mahomes threw two touchdown passes in the fourth quarter and scrambled 26 yards on the go-ahead drive before Harrison Butker kicked a 27-yard field goal with eight seconds left, giving the Chiefs a 38-35 victory over the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LVII on Sunday night.
Kansas City won its second NFL title in four years, and Mahomes earned his second Super Bowl MVP award. It came three days after he won the second league MVP award of his career.
“I thought guys just embraced the moment,” Mahomes said about rallying from a 10-point halftime deficit. “In that first half, we were playing and doing some good stuff, but I felt like the guys were getting consumed by everything around us.”
Mahomes and Philadelphia's Jalen Hurts excelled in the first Super Bowl matchup featuring two Black starting quarterbacks — but Mahomes turned it up in the second half after reaggravating a sprained right ankle.
“It took everybody to win the game,” Mahomes shouted as red and yellow confetti littered the field during the postgame celebration.
Coach Andy Reid, who couldn’t win the big game in Philadelphia, beat his former team to earn his second ring with Mahomes and the Chiefs.
“We wanted to get this so bad for him,” Kansas City tight end Travis Kelce said. “His legacy in Philly lives on forever. … There’s a lot of pride in knowing that he’s had success in two different organizations, but this was the better one.”
With the score tied at 35, the Eagles tried to let the Chiefs score a touchdown with less than two minutes left so they could get the ball back after a defensive holding call on cornerback James Bradberry on third-and-8 gave Kansas City a first down. Chiefs running back Jerick McKinnon slid at the 2-yard line, though, forcing the Eagles to use their last timeout.
“It was holding. I tugged his jersey. I was hoping they would let it slide,” Bradberry said.
After Mahomes took a knee twice, Butker nailed his kick, sending thousands of red-clad Chiefs fans into a frenzy.
“It feels amazing just to see the confetti,” said Butker, who missed a 42-yarder in the first quarter. “I just tried to focus on one kick and focus in on the process.”
The Chiefs won the franchise's second Super Bowl title to cap the 2019 season — 50 years after the first one — and Mahomes led them back from a 10-point deficit in the fourth quarter against the San Francisco 49ers in that one.
While the Chiefs lost the following year's Super Bowl to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers — and missed out on the big game altogether last year after losing the AFC title game — they hoisted the Lombardi Trophy again Sunday night.
The first Super Bowl involving both No. 1 seeds since the Eagles beat the New England Patriots 41-33 in February 2018 lived up to its hype. Sunday's game was the third-highest scoring Super Bowl, and the Eagles scored the most points by a losing team.
Chiefs supporters were outnumbered in the stadium, but they did their part to silence the boisterous Philly fans with the tomahawk chop chant. And then their team gave them reason to cheer.
Down 24-14 with a limping Mahomes, the Chiefs (17-3) followed up Rihanna’s electrifying halftime performance with a sensational offensive outburst.
Mahomes sustained a high-ankle sprain three weeks ago in the divisional round of the playoffs, and he hurt it again on a 3-yard scramble late in the second quarter. He limped off the field but showed no ill effects on Kansas City’s next possession.
“I knew it was pretty bad when he got up limping, but I knew it wasn’t going to be bad enough to where he was going to pull himself off the field,” Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy said. “If we would’ve pulled him off, I would’ve had to fight him. He would’ve probably fought me. And so it wasn’t worth entertaining.”
Mahomes slipped in the pocket — several players lost their footing on the natural grass surface — yet somehow regained his balance and scrambled 14 yards to the Eagles' 4, setting up Isiah Pacheco’s 1-yard run that cut the deficit to 24-21.
Mahomes then tossed a 5-yard touchdown pass to a wide-open Kadarius Toney to give Kansas City its first lead, 28-27, early in the fourth quarter.
After the Chiefs tightened up their defense, forcing the Eagles to punt, Toney returned a line-drive kick 65 yards to the Philadelphia 5 for the longest punt return in Super Bowl history. On third down from the 4, Mahomes connected with Skyy Moore — he was wide open, too — to extend Kansas City's lead to 35-27.
The Eagles wouldn’t go away, though.
Hurts hit DeVonta Smith for a 45-yard gain to the Kansas City 2 and ran in for his third score of the game. He also ran in for the 2-point conversion to tie it at 35 with 5:15 to go.
As “Fly! Eagles! Fly!” reverberated throughout the stadium, Mahomes and the Chiefs went back to work.
On Thursday night, the 27-year-old Mahomes became the third player to win his second NFL MVP award before age 28. On Sunday night, he became the youngest quarterback to start three Super Bowls. And by becoming the 11th player to win league MVP and a Super Bowl title in the same season, he also broke the so-called MVP curse after the previous nine honorees who reached the big game in the same year lost.
As for the Eagles (16-4), just five years after winning the first Super Bowl title in franchise history, they came close to securing a second with a different coach and a new quarterback. Nick Sirianni replaced Doug Pederson in 2021, and Hurts took over for Carson Wentz in late 2020.
Hurts set a Super Bowl record with 70 rushing yards and tied a record with three touchdown runs. He also threw for 304 yards and one touchdown. Ultimately, however, Philadelphia — which won three NFL titles before the merger with the AFL in 1970 — fell to 1-3 in the Super Bowl, with one of those losses with Reid as head coach.
“We use this pain, we use this failure to motivate us so we can make it a strength,” Sirianni said.
Hurts, who missed two games late in the regular season with a shoulder injury, had touchdown runs of 1 and 4 yards in the first half along with a 45-yard touchdown pass to A.J. Brown.
But Hurts also made a rare mistake when he fumbled without being hit while scrambling away from pressure. Kansas City linebacker Nick Bolton picked the ball up and raced 36 yards for a score that made it 14-14. Hurts had just eight turnovers this season (six interceptions and two fumbles).
Mahomes was 21-of-27 passing for 182 yards with three touchdowns and no turnovers. He ran for 44 yards.
He connected with Kelce on an 18-yard touchdown pass in the right corner to tie it at 7 in the first quarter. The Chiefs’ All-Pro tight end and the Eagles' All-Pro center, Jason Kelce, became the first set of brothers to play against each other in the Super Bowl.
Their mom, Donna Kelce, wore a half-red, half-green jersey with No. 87 on the front for Travis and No. 62 on the back for Jason. She sat in a suite between NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin.
Philadelphia fans turned State Farm Stadium into a sea of green, chanting “E-A-G-L-E-S!” and singing the team’s fight song after each score, but they left disappointed.
Reid won more games than any coach in team history during 14 seasons with the Eagles, who were playoff regulars in his tenure, but the one knock against him was that he couldn’t win the big one. Reid finally earned his ring in his seventh season with the Chiefs, and now he has another.
He turns 65 next month, but he has already ended any speculation about his potential retirement.
“If they’ll have me,” he said, "I'll stick around."
Updated with more information at 1:30 a.m. on Feb. 13, 2023.