CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The second-best play of the Kansas City Chiefs’ last-second win in Charlotte began with Patrick Mahomes identifying the Carolina Panthers’ defensive coverage and calling it out at the line of scrimmage — like a teacher offering answers to the test before placing it on your desk, as his receiver would later say.
The best play of the Chiefs’ last-second win in Charlotte began with Patrick Mahomes identifying the Panthers’ coverage again, except, well, this time he got it wrong. Oops.
Although the two snaps had completely contrasting starts, they shared a vintage conclusion:
Whether you think you’ve got Patrick Mahomes fooled or not, in the end, he’s got you.
Mahomes played his best football of the 2024 season in the Chiefs’ 30-27 win Sunday against a Panthers team that gave them all they could handle — the kind of football we used to characterize as routine for this offense. But it’s been a minute.
He threw for 269 yards and three touchdowns, compiling his best passer rating (120.2) and second most expected points added (14.5) in a game this year. You can find a chunk of the latter in those two plays.
The first: On a third-down snap with less than a minute remaining in the opening half, Mahomes alerted tight end Noah Gray that the Panthers were bringing the house, even though they’d yet to bring the house all game.
Mahomes was right. Gray adjusted his route after learning of the alert, and the two connected for the Chiefs’ first touchdown in the final minute of either half of a game this year.
“That’s just the blessing you have of playing with a quarterback like that,” Gray said.
So, the second: After the Panthers drove the field with inexplicable ease to tie the game late in the fourth quarter, Mahomes put the Chiefs in range for a game-winning field goal not with his arm but with his legs. We’ve seen that before, right?
A 33-yard run served as the most valuable play of a game in which he threw it better than he has in awhile. Guess what? It only happened because Mahomes thought the Panthers would run man-to-man defense, and he found out after the snap that they instead were in a matchup zone.
He improvised. Made a play.
“It’s not like I pre-plan that stuff,” he said.
That’s what made it feel so familiar.
The end result fell in Mahomes’ favor anyway. Everything else is just noise.
