Being down your top two wide receivers and trailing on the scoreboard in the final minute isn’t exactly a recipe for success.
Unless you have Patrick Mahomes.
The Kansas City quarterback engineered another game-winning drive, taking the Chiefs 75 yards in six plays that culminated with a 17-yard touchdown pass to Travis Kelce — his third of the game — to rally the Chiefs to a 30-27 road win Sunday against the Los Angeles Chargers.
“When I went in the huddle, everybody was like, ‘Let’s just do it,” said Mahomes, who completed 20 of 34 passes for 329 yards and three touchdowns to Kelce. “There was no doubt that we were going to go down there and score. There was no doubt we were going to make it happen.
“From the offensive line to the receivers to the running backs to the tight ends, everybody had the mindset of take it one play at a time, get it down the field and get a touchdown when it counts and that’s what we did.”
Following a touchdown pass from Justin Herbert to Joshua Palmer, the Chiefs offense took the field with 1:46 to play and immediately went to work. Mahomes completed passes to Marquez Valdes-Scantling and Skyy Moore, and he scrambled twice, setting up the game-winning throw to Kelce.
With JuJu Smith-Schuster (concussion) and Mecole Hardman (abdominal injury/illness) out, the Chargers opted to have safety Derwin James guard Kelce man-to-man. That presented opportunities as Kelce finished with six catches for 115 yards, but others stepped up as well.
Justin Watson had three catches for 67 yards, Skyy Moore had five catches for 63 yards and Jody Fortson added two catches for 51 yards.
“That game was a lot more than Mahomes to me,” Kelce said. “And that’s why it was so fun. You got a guy like Skyy Moore coming up big throughout the entire game. On top of that Justin Watson. Even in that last drive for us Marquez gets us going early, Pat makes a huge play with his feet. Those are the best. When everybody gets a piece of the pie, those are the best.”
It was Mahomes’ 11th regular season game-winning drive in the fourth quarter. Mahomes admitted that even though those are never easy, the Chiefs are always prepared for such situations thanks to coach Andy Reid.
“We do this a lot,” Mahomes said. “Coach Reid prepares us for these moments. We knew we had a lot of time on the clock, we knew we had some timeouts, so we didn’t rush. We just kind of went through what we went through every single day at practice, and we executed.”
The Chiefs (8-2) now have a three-game lead over the Chargers (5-5) in the division and a tiebreaker in the race for the AFC West title. But even with a commanding lead, Mahomes and the Chiefs aren’t getting too far ahead of themselves.
“We’re just taking it week by week,” Mahomes said. “We take it day by day. We knew we were going to grow this year and keep getting better. And I’m proud of our guys.
“We’ve played a lot of tough games against a lot of great teams, and we’ve stepped up and won. Obviously, it feels good now, and it’ll be a nice plane ride home. But we got the Super Bowl champs (Rams) coming in next week.”
