Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes didn’t dwell on last season’s loss to the Cincinnati Bengals in the AFC championship game. Instead, he went back home to Texas and focused on the future.
“I kind of just moved on knowing that I needed to keep getting better and needed to keep moving forward,” Mahomes said. “And if you want to have success that next season you can’t dwell on last season. You have to learn from it and just get better from it.”
It seems the Chiefs (9-2) have done that this season as they have a stranglehold on the race for the division title and hold the No. 1 seed in the AFC playoff picture. Still, the Chiefs are hoping to get a little revenge on the Bengals when they play at 3:25 p.m. Sunday in Cincinnati.
“I don’t know if it means more,” Mahomes said of this year’s rematch. “I think you have to keep stuff in perspective. It’s a brand-new football season. Obviously anytime someone beats you the year before, you want to beat them, especially in a game like they beat us in — to go to the Super Bowl.
“And we understand that’s a great football team that’s playing great football right now. So we’ll go out there and put our best effort forward and try to play our best football and get that win because that’s a big win to try to hold that No. 1 seed and win our division.”
The Chiefs led 21-10 at halftime in last year’s AFC title game, but the Bengals rallied in the second half and won 27-24 in overtime. Mahomes said the Bengals didn’t do anything too different in the second half that game but noticed his fundamentals were lacking. And that’s something he has worked hard to correct this season.
“That’s what I look back, especially when I watched the tape this week is I was really good in the first half with my fundamentals,” Mahomes said. “And as the game went on, and we weren’t having success as on offense, my fundamentals got worse and worse.
“They played a little more man coverage than they did in the first half. They made some adjustments of trying to be able to be in the right spots. But at the end of the day, we have to execute at a high level. And I trust our guys are going to win against man coverage. And if can execute and throw the ball in the right spot we should have success. So I need to get back to fundamentals and get back to being who I am.”
