‘I’ve got to be better’: Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes blames himself for late collapse in OT loss to Bengals

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Patrick Mahomes has stood beneath the confetti, engineered the biggest-stage comeback, returned to those same bright lights in consecutive years.

Four straight seasons, the quarterback has guided his team to the AFC championship game.

Now, for the third time in four years, his Kansas City Chiefs fell short of their ultimate goal. And for the first time in three years, they won’t compete in a Super Bowl.

Mahomes knows what he’s missing. He’s come too close to attempt blissful ignorance.

“Whenever you taste winning the Super Bowl, nothing less than that is success,” Mahomes said Sunday evening after the Bengals’ 27-24 overtime AFC championship win. “The leaders on this team know: This isn’t our standard.”

And Sunday’s outcome fell short of Mahomes’ personal standards, too.

For nearly two full quarters, he was superb.

Mahomes moved to find receiver Tyreek Hill on their first touchdown, scrambling right before unleashing a baseball-like throw to the corner of the end zone for a 10-yard score with 6:09 to play in the first quarter. He commenced Kansas City’s second drive by sailing a 44-yard bomb in stride to receiver Mecole Hardman, who outpaced Bengals cornerback Chidobe Awuzie just enough to set up the Chiefs at Cincinnati’s 31-yard line for a soon-arriving second score.

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On this touchdown, Mahomes was again not gifted a clean pocket nor a readily available read. He didn’t mind. He pump-faked left and spun out of defenders’ grasp right, finding Pro Bowl tight end Travis Kelce airborne and available in the end zone for a score. By the time Hardman just barely grasped his third touchdown pass of the first half, Twitter replays bore a ubiquitous refrain: “Mahomes magic.”

“He was trying to move around like he did and make plays,” Chiefs coach Andy Reid said. “You never have to worry about that part.”

But after halftime, it appeared, Mahomes was unable to access his sorcery.

Collapsing pockets? Like most mortal quarterbacks across the league would have, Mahomes took four second-half sacks after yielding to zero in the first half. Incompletions? Mahomes connected on 18 of 21 targets before halftime, but just 8 of 18 afterward. His passer rating plummeted from 149.9 in the first half to 34.0 in the second.

Timing, scheme reads and mobility eluded the player who had earlier eluded the defense. The player who needed 13 seconds last week to set up a season-saving field goal couldn’t score in 13+ minutes this week.

But why?

“A few misreads here and there, guys that were open and I didn’t hit it the right time, I passed on something shorter wanting to get something deeper down the field,” Mahomes said later Sunday at Arrowhead Stadium. “When you’re playing a good team and don’t hit what’s there, and try to get a little more than what’s necessary, it kind of bites you in the butt, I guess you’d say. We were playing so well in the first half, and the second half we were just off a tick.

“That’s all it takes to lose a football game.”

The complexity of football makes imprecision more likely than not. The Bengals defense was statistically average through the season – 17th in points allowed, 18th in yardage given – but had hit a stride of late, the AFC championship the unit's fourth straight game with multiple takeaways. The Chiefs offense had also weathered its rougher patches but ultimately emerged as a top-five attack in total yardage, points and passing yards.

And yet, the Bengals trumped the Chiefs Sunday for the second time in the month of January. Like in Week 17, the Bengals edged the Chiefs by 3 points. And like in Week 17, the Chiefs squandered a significant first-half lead.

Mahomes struggled to accept that.

“I’ve got to be better,” he said. “When you’re up 21-7 at a point in a football game, you can’t lose it. And I put that on myself.”

Mahomes said he adapted better in the first half to the Bengals using a spy on him than he did in the second. He trusted his targets and aimed to create something from nothing – which he had repeatedly succeeded in doing during the first half of Sunday’s matchup and in a shootout 42-36 overtime win last week against the Bills.

But the firepower sputtered at halftime.

The forcefield that seemed impenetrable on his first-half scrambles suffered apparent chinks in its armor. Punts piled after dropped screen passes and defensive lineman B.J. Hill swatting a pass for an interception. Mahomes’ teammates and coaches said they could have done more, Reid repeating half a dozen times he could have given Mahomes and Co. “better” plays to work with, from the thwarted final attempt at yardage entering halftime to the punting palooza that progressed through the third and fourth quarters.

In overtime, Mahomes was uncharacteristically out of sync. He threw a short left pass to Demarcus Robinson too high, an anticipated quick throw to his right nearly intercepted before cornerback Eli Apple dropped it. The Bengals defense seemed to – and later said they did – know what was coming. On third-and-10, Mahomes praying on a Hail Mary down the left sideline to Tyreek Hill, the quarterback trusted his speedy talent despite the two safeties blanketing him.

Bengals safety Jessie Bates III knocked the ball from Hill’s reach, fellow safety Von Bell securing it.

“It got tipped, good play by one safety and fell right into the other dude’s hands,” Mahomes said. “I’d have done it again. Whenever you have a guy like Tyreek running and he has a step on someone, give him a chance to make a play. Eight times out of 10, he makes that catch. Didn’t work for us today but it’s a play I’d go to again if I had the chance.”

The Bengals marched down the field and then trusted in the strong leg of rookie Evan McPherson, whose four kicks Sunday improved him to 12-of-12 on postseason field-goal attempts.

Mahomes, meanwhile, retreated to a locker room that Chiefs safety Tyrann Mathieu described as “deflated.” The quarterback said he understood the rare confluence of matters a Super Bowl season often necessitated – special quarterback, special players, special circumstances – and he lamented that he failed to elevate his play sufficiently for his team to return to the biggest stage. Accountability was plentiful among Mahomes, teammates and Reid. But it wasn’t enough.

In the specter of Tom Brady’s expected retirement, Mahomes was reminded how improbable it is to even near the future Hall of Famer’s seven championships. To Mahomes, the Chiefs’ four straight conference championship berths aren’t an indicator of success so much as they’re a reminder that the Chiefs have the necessary ingredients to outlast. This year, they didn’t.

“It’s hard – I’ve understood that after the years I’ve had,” Mahomes said. “I’ve been close a lot and only been there twice and won once. … A few plays here and there, you could have four chances at the Super Bowl.

“It’s definitely disappointing. Have to take care of what we have here. Make sure you continue to battle, continue to get better.

“And find ways to win Super Bowls at the end of the day.”

Follow USA TODAY Sports’ Jori Epstein on Twitter @JoriEpstein.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Patrick Mahomes takes blame, laments Chiefs' late collapse vs. Bengals