Patrick Mahomes tried to take the blame for Kansas City’s failure to achieve an elusive Super Bowl ‘three-peat’, but the truth was few members of the squad were able to play to their full potential against a suffocating Philadelphia Eagles team in the 59^th edition of the game.

Despite being the higher seeded team heading to New Orleans for Super Bowl LIX, the Chiefs were never allowed to get into their usual stride, with Vic Fangio’s Eagles defense repeatedly finding ways to get hits on Mahomes, limiting his passing game in the process. With the rushing attack getting equally little going, Philadelphia were able to post 24 unanswered points at the half, with the threat of a shutout very real until Mahomes finally found his groove with the game effectively out of reach. The final score was a resounding 40-22 victory for the Eagles, who avenged their narrow defeat at the hands of the same opponent just a couple of years ago.

With both franchises returning a lot of players fro Super Bowl LVII, there was an element of ‘known quantity’ about the opposite sideline, but Philadelphia’s Jalen Hurts was able to find his receivers far more easily than Mahomes, who came within a whisker of setting a new record for sacks taken in a Super Bowl, and counter Steve Spagnuolo’s ability to limit superstar running back Saquon Barkley.

“Any time you lose a Super Bowl, it’s the worst feeling in the world,” Mahomes conceded when asked whether the defeat was as hard to take as losing to Tom Brady’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers prior to the ‘three-peat’ bid beginning. “They’ll stick with you the rest of your career — but those will be the two losses that will motivate me to be even better for the rest of my career because you get so few of these opportunities. You have to capitalise on them and they hurt probably more than the wins feel good.

“I was I was proud of how my team fought this entire season, with the expectations that we had on us, but we came up short and now it’s how you respond. Hopefully, we can learn from this like we learned from the last loss and continue to get even better — because it’s going to take better football, especially from me, in order to make a run at another Super Bowl.”

Mahomes was on the run from the opening exchanges, forced into fleeing by a Philadelphia defense that mirrored the pursuit Tampa Bay had put on him when he was playing behind a makeshift offensive line in Super Bowl LV. This time, Mahomes line was more in keeping with the unit that had got the Chiefs to the big game, but had no answer for an Eagles pass rush that never needed to blitz to achieve the desired result.

“There’s no way around it, [Philadelphia] played great from start to finish,” the quarterback acknowledged. “They got after it — their defensive line played really well; the DBs played well to complement them and the linebackers as well — but I can’t turn the ball over early in the game when it’s not going our way. And I have to learn from that and try to be better the next opportunity that I hopefully get.”

Mahomes committed three turnovers in the game, including a pick-six by Eagles rookie — and birthday boy — Cooper DeJean. An interception, this time by linebacker Zach Baun, was immediately converted into an A.J. Brown as Philly QB — and eventual MVP — Jalen Hurts made the most of every opportunity presented to him. While Mahomes attempts to shoulder the blame, however, he still did all he could to try and pull his team back into the fray, helping to post 22 points albeit with the hay mostly in the Eagles’ barn.

“Listen, there were too many turnovers and too many penalties against a good football team — and you just can’t do that,” Chiefs head coach Andy Reid sighed. “Eagles DC] Vic [Fangio] does a nice job with that defense and they played well. They’ve got good players and good scheme, and they actually executed better than what we did. They coached better than me and they played better [than us].”

Reid refused to let Mahomes take the blame for the defeat, pointing out that the QB never gave up, throwing three late touchdowns in an attempt to salvage something from the game. Even the interceptions, Reid explained, were a product of the game script rather than Mahomes’ profligacy.

“Listen, he did a good job, and the guys battled all the way to the end,” he noted. “They did some nice things at the end, but it was too late to go ahead. We went a little no huddle, but it didn’t didn’t work as well as we wanted it to. We got down [on the scoreboard], so we threw the ball probably more than we would want to going into the game, but I felt like it was important that we did that just get back.”

Having gone 15-2 to reach the postseason — and one of those defeats coming to Denver in Week 18 when the resting most of their starters — Reid admitted that the Chiefs would need to regroup, not from missing out on a hallowed ‘three-peat’ but simply after being humbled by their opponent.

“We’ll learn from this,” the head coach insisted. “Like most games here, when you don’t do very well, you learn from it as a coach and learn from it as a player and you move on. You battle your tail off to get this far, and it’s very, very hard to do. We spent a lot of time doing this and it’s not a hobby, right? We’re in it the whole way, and it’s been a lot of hours as players and coaches, so it’s going to hurt. They all hurt when you get to this level and these things happen. When you get this far and you don’t play as well as you want to, it hurts, but this is a tough game — it’s best against the best.

“The ‘three-peat’ wasn’t as big an issue [as people make out] and I think they’re more focused on [this performance] than they are on ‘three-peats’ and all that stuff. I thought they did a couple of nice little things where they got the best of us on a couple of those [plays]. We just didn’t play very well, you know.”