Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs are playing on Christmas Day for the second year in a row. Although their season couldn’t have gone better, they would like to redress their festive faux pas of yore. Of course, they have plenty of other things to play for, but perhaps when you’re going for a three-peat and have one loss, you have to find things to complain about.
“We’ll go out there trying to do what we can to not have the same experience we had last Christmas”, Mahomes said, via the Chiefs’ website, leading to their game today against the Steelers. Asked if that drives him at all, he said, “For sure”.
“That was not just a loss, that was a pretty embarrassing loss”, the Chiefs quarterback added. “And everybody was watching because it’s Christmas Day. Obviously, it sparked us to win the Super Bowl, so it ended up working out. But you want to make sure that you go out there and you put up a better performance for everybody to see”.
On the scoreboard, it doesn’t look so bad. The Chiefs lost, albeit to the Los Vegas Raiders, 20-14. They allowed the Raiders to score 17 unanswered points, though, only pulling within one score with under three minutes to play.
Las Vegas never allowed the Chiefs to give the ball back to Patrick Mahomes, sealing its seventh win. That loss dropped Mahomes’ outfit to 9-6 and kept the AFC West title in contention. But they won their final two games, finishing 11-6, and went on to win the Super Bowl.
This season, the Chiefs are sitting at 14-1 with two games left to play. That first game is against a Steelers team that needs a win to preserve its path to a division title. Mahomes and company are already locked into one of the AFC’s top two seeds. They only need one more win or a Bills loss in the next two weeks to secure the top seed.
While the Steelers have more at stake, the Chiefs have something in reach today. The Steelers can’t win the AFC North by winning, nor can they lose it. But if Patrick Mahomes beats Pittsburgh for the fourth time, Kansas City can rest its starters for the next two weeks.
They didn’t have that luxury last year, though they were able to rest Mahomes in the finale. But they didn’t have the first-round bye since they were only the No. 3 seed. The Steelers were the seventh seed, avoiding the Chiefs in the first round, but losing to the Bills.
It’s one thing to have to play on Christmas, but another to lose on Christmas. This is the third time the Steelers have played on Christmas, doing so just twice before in 2016 and 2017. They managed to win both of those, including the Immaculate Extension game. Today will mark the fourth Christmas Day game for the Chiefs, but only the second for Patrick Mahomes. They are 2-1 overall, but 0-1 with him. And that doesn’t sit well with the two-time NFL MVP.
