KANSAS CITY, Mo. — There might have been a time early in his career when Patrick Mahomes would have looked back at a season where the Kansas City Chiefs lost in overtime of the AFC Championship Game and felt his team accomplished a lot.
But he said after Sunday’s 27-24 overtime loss to the Cincinnati Bengals that that time has passed.
“The leaders on this team know this isn’t our standard,” said Mahomes, who threw a touchdown pass on each of the Chiefs’ first three possessions but threw one interception in the second half and another in overtime. “We want to win the Super Bowl. Whenever you taste winning the Super Bowl, anything less than that is not success.
“It’s definitely disappointing. Here, with this group of guys that we have, we expect to be in that game and win that game and anything less than that is not success. We’ll go back and look at all the things we did well, the adversity we battled through, the team we became at the end of the season and try to learn from the mistakes we made and try to be better next year.”
This was the second overtime loss for Mahomes in the AFC Championship Game since he became a starter in 2018. The Chiefs lost in the conference title game that year to the New England Patriots.
In between that loss and the one Sunday, the Chiefs appeared in two Super Bowls, winning one and losing the other.
“A few plays here and there we could have four chances at the Super Bowl … You can’t let this end what we have here,” he said. “You have to make sure you continue to battle, continue to get better and try to find ways to win Super Bowls.”
Mahomes said a second AFC Championship Game loss gave him a greater appreciation for the accomplishments of Tom Brady, who won six Super Bowls with the New England Patriots and one with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
“His career is one of a kind,” Mahomes said. “That’s why he’s the GOAT. To win that many Super Bowls and win that many games, it’s hard. I understand that. The years that I’ve had, I’ve been close a lot. I’ve only been there twice and I’ve only won once. I understand it takes a special player, a special group of guys, special circumstances for that to happen.
“I’m just going to try to do whatever I can to get myself a chance every year to get in that game and to win it.”