Hobbled Mahomes gilds legend with latest Super Bowl magic act

N ow imagine if he had two good ankles. Patrick Mahomes hopped and hobbled to the sideline at the end of the first half, unable or at least unwilling to put any weight on his right leg after Eagles linebacker TJ Edwards had dragged him down by it. He showed no such struggle two quarters later, as he accelerated away from the league’s best pass rushers and into the open field on the 26-yard run that set his team up to win Super Bowl LVII.

This is what the great ones do, putting their troubles to one side and their teams on their backs in the moments that matter. Mahomes aspires to be the greatest. “That’s what he wants to do, that’s how he goes about his business,” said head coach Andy Reid afterward. “The great quarterbacks make everyone around them better, including the head coach. He’s done a heck of a job.”

The last sentence almost felt like an understatement but that was Reid’s point too, as he stressed the player’s humility. When Mahomes arrived for his press conference immediately afterward, his focus was all on the collective: teammates who challenged each other to push harder, rookies who stepped up to the occasion.

Allow us, then, to say it for him: Mahomes is one of the most brilliant quarterbacks ever to play this game, and there are some who would already call him the best of all time. Plenty might scorn the latter suggestion, observing that he still only has two Super Bowl wins to Tom Brady’s seven, but the truth is that comparing a complete career with an ongoing one is pointless in any case. As Mahomes put it a few days ago: “Ask me when I’m like 38 years old.”

Yet this was another night when he did something that nobody else could, becoming the first player ever to win the Super Bowl in the same season