Kansas City started losing this Super Bowl long before kickoff on Sunday
The 55th Super Bowl was not Tom Brady vs. Patrick Mahomes and never was going to be, not unless Mahomes became a cornerback. It was a collection of skirmishes, little fires everywhere. Tampa Bay’s 31-9 win was hardly what the NFL’s melodramatists wanted. It did show how the final game is the sum of so many others. It was Laurent Duvarnay-Tardif vs. COVID-19. On July 24, the Chiefs’ guard and the only active NFL player with a medical degree announced he would stay in Quebec this season and fight the virus. Eventually it was Mitchell Schwartz vs. his own back and Eric Fisher vs. his own Achilles tendon. Schwartz and Fisher lost, which meant Kansas City could only bring one starter, center Austin Reiter, who had played the same offensive line position in last year’s Super Bowl victory over San Francisco. That is why Mahomes was repeatedly taking snaps and launching into a French Army reverse sprint before he would spin and throw a doomed but miraculous pass 40 yards downfield. He had a career-low passer rating of 52.3, and the Chiefs were 3 for 13 on third down and 0 for 3 in the red zone. But the prevailing game on Sunday was Chiefs vs. Chaos. That, too, was a blowout. Their two defensive leaders, Chris Jones and Tyrann Mathieu, couldn’t squelch their own tantrums. Jones had neither of Kansas City’s two quarterback hits. Their penalties allowed Tampa Bay to take a field goal off the board and replace it with a touchdown. Offensively, well, it’s suddenly a good thing for offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy that he doesn’t call the plays.
