After the Chiefs kicked a field goal on the last play to beat the Panthers and continue a run of dramatic victories, quarterback Patrick Mahomes referenced the team’s run of close victories by saying that he wouldn’t mind winning a game that didn’t come down to the wire.
That didn’t happen last week as the Chiefs needed a rushed snap that turned into a fumble to beat the Raiders 19-17 and Mahomes took a somewhat different approach to the team’s penchant for nailbiters on Wednesday.
“It keeps you motivated, which I think can be a good thing in the end,’' Mahomes said, via Adam Teicher of ESPN.com. “I think sometimes I look back on the year we lost the Super Bowl and we were very dominant throughout the regular season and it’s just kind of like you get to this point where you start coasting [because] you’re winning games, you’re just doing the normal thing. If you look at us last year though, it didn’t go the way we wanted it to. I feel like we just continued to work every single week and we knew we had to get better and we didn’t let the details slip and we ended up playing our best football at the end of the year, and so that’s the hope is that with all these close finishes, we’re getting wins, but it’s keeping us hungry so that we can try to continue to get better as the season goes on.”
The Chiefs run of success with Mahomes has been fueled by their ability to come out on top in the playoffs when playing the kinds of close games that they’ve been playing all of this season, so the quarterback’s view makes sense. That said, a couple of stress-free games before the postseason still might not be a bad idea for a team that’s been living on the edge.
