This is certainly a week that Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes will want to forget.
After getting dominated in a 31-9 loss in Super Bowl 55 on Sunday, Mahomes will go under the knife three days later on Wednesday to repair a turf toe problem that has apparently been bothering the former MVP for the past couple of months, a source confirmed to ESPN.
Mahomes is expected to miss most of the offseason work with his teammates, but he is fully expected to be back and going at full bore once training camp rolls around later this summer, another source added.
It was truly a ghastly performance for Mahomes and his offense on Super Sunday. The team failed to score a touchdown for the entire game for the first time since Mahomes took the reins of the team at the beginning of the 2018 season.
Mahomes, of course, has acknowledged that there was something wrong with his foot during this strange playoff run, but he would not use that as an excuse for he and his team’s poor play in the Super Bowl.
“I can’t say the toe was a problem when I played two weeks ago and I played well on it,” he said. “Anytime you play football, you have to battle through injuries.”
The fourth-year pro put up one of the worst performances of his career on Sunday, both by the numbers and otherwise. Mahomes went just 26-of-49 for 270 yards, no touchdowns, and a pair of interceptions that resulted in a 52.3 passer rating—though the signal caller is far from the one most at fault for the Chiefs’ collapse.
Mahomes is surely frustrated with the lack of quality and effort from his defense, but most of all it was his offense teammates that let him down. The game’s best player faced more pressures (29) than any QB in Super Bowl history, and the poor kid ran around for 497 yards of pre-throw/pre-sack yardage, the most of any quarterback in any game this season.
He was sacked twice, and was running for his life on four or five times as many plays, several times improbably finding an open receiver, only for the wideout to let his team and quarterback down with a drop.
Doubtless the Chiefs will internalize that devastating showing, and come back much stronger next season. Kansas City is sitting at very early +500 NFL odds to win next year’s Super Bowl, and those numbers are not too shabby considering what kind talent they’re bringing back next season.
Mahomes, as well as his head coach, Andy “the Walrus” Reid, will certainly want to make up for this hiccup, not to mention the host of role players that played subpar football when it mattered most on Sunday. Getting sixty percent of their starting offensive line back for the next campaign won’t hurt their chances either.
