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Not only was the San Francisco 49ers’ decision to give Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs the ball second, and therefore the chance to win, stupid but it was historically stupid.
A Substack article published by Neil Paine highlights just how dumb the 49ers’ decision to give the ball to Mahomes with the chance to win the game was, as the 28-year-old signal-caller is quite literally perfect in those situations,
“Since 2001, there have been 125 drives in the NFL postseason where it was at least the fourth quarter, there was under a minute left to play, and the team on offense trailed by seven points or fewer at the start. These are your standard clutch moments for a football team, the do-or-die drives that win and lose critical games,” Paine explains.
“Out of those 125 drives, only 40 percent of them saw the team on offense pull off the magic trick and get the points they needed. Some quarterbacks are pretty good at it, such as Tom Brady, who went 5-for-11 (46%), or Drew Brees, who went 3-for-6 (50%). Only Patrick Mahomes, though, 7-for-7, or perfect, in those dire situations.”
Basically, of all the quarterbacks to grace the National Football League in the last quarter century, Mahomes was literally *the last one* the 49ers should’ve been giving the ball to in this sort of do-or-die situation.
With his game-tying drive in regulation and his game-winning drive in overtime, Mahomes was able to clinch the third Super Bowl title of his career, which began in earnest when he became the team’s starting quarterback in 2018.
The Super Bowl 58 victory also led to Mahomes winning the third Super Bowl MVP of his career to go along with his two regular season MVP awards. He’s also the first QB to lead his team to consecutive Super Bowl wins since Tom Brady did it with Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots in 2003 and 2004.