Patrick Mahomes was chasing Super Bowl history. He left humbled and harassed

The Chiefs may well contend for the championship again next season. But Sunday’s loss to the Eagles exposed problems that had been there all year. Some losses sting. Others echo throughout a career. The Philadelphia Eagles pummeled the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22 in Super Bowl LIX on Sunday, ending any hope of a historic three-peat. It was a humbling. A humiliation. A beatdown for the ages. Most jarring of all, the Chiefs didn’t threaten for a moment.

Even the final score is misleading. Late in the third quarter, the Eagles held a 34-0 lead, the largest lead in a Super Bowl since 2014. The Eagles were dunking Gatorade on their head coach Nick Sirianni while the Chiefs were still trying to find a way into the game. By the fourth quarter, there was a sighting of Eagles backup quarterback Kenny Pickett, the human victory cigar. The Chiefs entered the game chasing history. They left with their heads spinning, having been outplayed, outcoached and, most surprising of all, outclassed at quarterback.

There was a moment late in the second quarter when the Chiefs looked to Patrick Mahomes to make anything happen. The quarterback who routinely pulls off the unthinkable had led his team into a 10-0 ditch. He had been harassed, dropped and rocked early in the game, with the Eagles’ four-man defensive line dominating the Chiefs’ woeful offensive line. But with Mahomes, it always feels like you’re one play away from the Chiefs finding a spark.

If anyone could conjure a moment of magic, you felt, it was Mahomes. In each of their three Super Bowl wins with Mahomes at the helm, the Chiefs have trailed by 10 at some point in the game. But this time was different. After being sacked on back-to-back plays, staring down a two-score deficit, Mahomes faced a third-and-17. He took the snap, scrambled to his right to evade pressure, and then threw across his body into the waiting hands of Eagles corner Cooper DeJean, who returned the ball for a touchdown. That made it 17-0 to the Eagles; the refs may as well have called ballgame.

The Chiefs could never get rolling on offense. By the end of the first half, they had run only 20 plays and gained 23 yards – the kind of distance Mahomes usually gets on a single throw. Mahomes hit on just six of his 14 pass attempts, and the team struggled to cross midfield. The Eagles drained the clock, put together long scoring drives, then quickly won the ball back as the Chiefs offense imploded. As Kendrick Lamar was taking a dig at Drake, the Chiefs were less concerned with their three-peat as scraping together three points.

This was a game decided in the trenches, as Super Bowls often are. The Eagles shattered the Chiefs’ offensive line and the ripple effect swallowed everyone and everything in Andy Reid’s offense, including Mahomes. Scared of running the ball against Philly’s enormous defensive front, Reid bailed on the rushing game altogether. That left the ball in Mahomes’ hands, facing a hellacious Eagles pass rush that sacked the quarterback six times and pressured him on over half of his dropbacks. The pressure came quickly and was sustained. On every play, it felt like two or three Eagles were greeting Mahomes in the backfield. For large chunks of the game, it was as if the Eagles’ defense had 15 players on the field. The pass-rushers came in all shapes and attacked from all angles, forcing Mahomes to scramble around for his life.

The Eagles pass-rush was the story of the game, but Mahomes should not be absolved of blame. He turned down throws, moved into pressure and made panicked decisions in key spots. From the first drive, he looked skittish, as though he knew his offensive line wouldn’t be able to hold. By the second quarter, his fears confirmed, he looked downright lost, tossing up wayward picks to Zack Baun and DeJean. Rarely has Mahomes, typically the coolest guy in the building on the biggest stage, looked so frazzled. He ended the game with three turnovers, including a strip-sack on the first play after the Chiefs had scored their first touchdown to cut the Eagles lead to 37-6.

The seeds for this defeat were planted all year. When they needed to raise their game most, season-long concerns came back to bite the Chiefs: the flaky offensive line, the one-dimensional offense, the lack of a vertical passing game and a slow, ineffective Travis Kelce. And it’s not as if the team’s defense did not hold their side of the bargain. They slowed Saquon Barkley and the Eagles all-conquering run game down early and often, forcing quarterback Jalen Hurts into tough, clutch third-down throws to keep the Eagles ticking along. It was the Chiefs’ offense that was their undoing – for what is only the second time during their five Super Bowl trips in six seasons. They could not put sustained drives together or bank on Mahomes to cover up for struggles elsewhere, as he has so often before.