The Kansas City Chiefs hosted the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Monday Night Football, and a sequence of plays in the fourth quarter illustrated just how different Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes is from the rest of us mere mortals.
The football world held its collective breath early in the fourth quarter, when it looked as if the star quarterback had suffered a leg injury. The apparent injury came on this play, a short touchdown pass to Samaje Perine to tie the game at 17:
As you can see at the end of the play, after scrambling out to the right and flipping forward to Perine for the game-tying touchdown, Mahomes comes up hobbling.
This replay angle showed Mahomes wheel away in pain after letting the short toss go:
Mahomes needed to be helped off the field, and was taken to the blue medical tent after reaching the Kansas City sideline.
However, he was quickly cleared by doctors, and returned to a roar from the fans in the stands and was seen jogging on the sidelines, as well as throwing a few warmup passes with simulated dropback action.
According to ESPN’s Lisa Salters, it was an ankle injury for Mahomes, but he was back in the huddle on the Chiefs’ next possession.
Which ended with this touchdown pass to DeAndre Hopkins, their second scoring connection of the night:
Kansas City still needed more heroics from Mahomes to pull out the win. After Hopkins’ second touchdown of the night, Baker Mayfield led Tampa Bay on a game-tying drive, that ended with this short touchdown pass to wide receiver Ryan Miller:
The game went into overtime, and the Chiefs won the toss as Mayfield and Mahomes met at midfield. Kansas City took the ensuing kickoff and went right down the field to score the game-winning touchdown.
Which came on this touchdown plunge from Kareem Hunt:
“We got to running the football again,” said Mahomes to Salters after the game. “That’s a great football team.”
“I rolled the ankle, I rolled it last week and when you roll it again, it never feels good,” added Mahomes about his ankle. “After I got some time it started feeling better … I’ll be ready to go next week.”
Mahomes appeared on the Chiefs’ injury report all week with an ankle injury, but he did not miss any practice time — and it barely slowed him down on Monday.