Super Bowl LIV: Kansas City Chiefs defeat San Francisco 49ers in stunning fourth-quarter comeback

Miami Gardens, Florida: The years since the Kansas City Chiefs’ last Super Bowl victory have felt like decades and the decades like centuries in Kansas City, Missouri, where season after season ended in emotional wreckage. The playoffs unspooled as if booby-trapped. Good teams cratered. Better ones collapsed. There are scars.

Deliverance arrived on Sunday night. The Chiefs crammed a half-century of frustration and waiting into a fourth quarter that will be remembered for eternity. A team that could never win the final game, directed by a man who had never won it as a head coach, came back and defeated the San Francisco 49ers, 31-20, behind a quarterback whose capacity for brilliance seems to know no bounds.

To deliver the Chiefs’ first championship since the 1969 season, and coach Andy Reid’s first in a sparkling career, quarterback Patrick Mahomes reprised his playoff wizardry. Just as he did three weeks ago against the Houston Texans, and two weeks ago against the Tennessee Titans, Mahomes spun a double-digit deficit into a double-digit victory. Somehow, Kansas City scored the final 21 points, all within a five-minute-one-second span of the fourth quarter, to deny San Francisco its record-tying sixth Lombardi Trophy.

At 24, Mahomes is the second-youngest quarterback to win a Super Bowl, behind Ben Roethlisberger, who was 23 when he won in the 2005 season. He is also the youngest player to have won a Most Valuable Player Award, in the 2018 season, and a Super Bowl. He was named the MVP of the game on Sunday.

At the conclusion of a centennial season for the NFL defined by the ascent of African American quarterbacking stars like Mahomes and this season’s league MVP, Lamar Jackson of the Baltimore Ravens, as well as the retirements of three under-30 stars who retreated because of long-term health concerns, the showpiece of the NFL calendar was played under a sombre backdrop.

A week that began with players and coaches absorbing the death of Kobe Bryant, the NBA star who perished with eight others in a 26 January helicopter crash, ended with both teams assembling on the 24-yard line — for Bryant’s number — in a pregame moment of silence.

It was an atypical Super Bowl for other reasons — from the halftime show orchestrated by Jay-Z, summoned to allay concerns about managing social justice expressions, to the conspicuous absence of the New England Patriots, who had appeared in four of the past five — but not for the tight margin.

The matchup of two of the NFL’s five highest-scoring teams settled not into an offensive showcase but a taut affair that revolved around a singular philosophical quandary: Could the 49ers stifle Mahomes?

Through three quarters, the 49ers could.

But not in the fourth, when Mahomes tossed, in succession, touchdown passes to Travis Kelce, with 6:13 remaining and, after a critical defensive stop, Damien Williams, with 2:44 left. Williams added a 38-yard scamper for a clinching score, and the crowd, heavy with Chiefs fans, lapsed into delirium.

Heading into that fourth quarter, Mahomes had thrown for only 145 yards with an interception — converted into Raheem Mostert’s 1-yard run, which extended San Francisco’s lead to 20-10 — and then it got worse, if briefly.

On the Chiefs’ next series, they drove deep into San Francisco territory, to the 23-yard line, before Mahomes side-armed a pass that caromed off Tyreek Hill’s hands into those of 49ers defensive back Tarvarius Moore. Mahomes had never thrown an interception across four previous playoff games, but Sunday he was picked off on consecutive drives.

As omens go, the 49ers’ path to this Super Bowl evoked a rabbit’s foot encased by a four-leaf clover.

As in 1995, they lost only three times behind a Shanahan calling plays for a quarterback who won two rings backing up a superstar. Instead of Mike Shanahan tutoring Steve Young, though, this time it was Kyle Shanahan — who during his father’s playoff run wore a Deion Sanders jersey every day for a month — guiding Jimmy Garoppolo, whom the 49ers never expected to acquire until they did.

The 49ers constructed a powerhouse by making audacious moves at almost every position — except, at first, quarterback. They bypassed Mahomes in the 2017 draft, the first under Shanahan and general manager John Lynch, because they deemed him too risky to take at such an early stage of their rebuild. Also, they had targeted someone else. But instead of pursuing Kirk Cousins, San Francisco pounced when New England offered Garoppolo, whose compact delivery and quick release aligned with Shanahan’s offense.

His style is less mesmerising than Mahomes’, but equally effective. Through three quarters, Garoppolo had thrown only three incompletions — including an interception, which led to a Kansas City field goal — among his 20 passes, critical as San Francisco extended drives and kept the Chiefs off the field.

Shanahan and Lynch inherited a roster bereft of talent three years ago, and in their first season together, San Francisco lost its first nine games. Had Shanahan not been on the sideline for all of them, he once said, he would have presumed that he had died — no other explanation would have sufficed. As they cycled in a cadre of speedy running backs, to complement the beastly tight end George Kittle, the 49ers constructed an offense to Shanahan’s demanding specifications.

His ability to place formational stress on opponents and create mismatches, rivaled perhaps only by Reid, is steeped in a deep understanding of defenders’ responsibilities. He preys on their weaknesses and puts them in conflict. Sometimes, Shanahan gets so locked in calling plays that his assistants fall silent over the headsets, lest they interrupt his mojo and concentration.

By the 49ers’ third drive, he was manipulating Kansas City’s linebackers with presnap deception and misdirection, setting up play-action passes and creating room in the middle of the field — precisely where San Francisco wanted the ball. The 49ers evened the score at 10-10 on a masterly design in which fullback Kyle Juszczyk motioned out before doubling back inside off a well-concealed play fake. Garoppolo whipped a low pass to Juszczyk over the middle, and he darted in from 15 yards, the first score by a fullback in a Super Bowl since Mike Alstott of Tampa Bay 17 years ago.

His touchdown kindled a stretch of 17 consecutive 49ers points. San Francisco led by 10 with less than seven minutes remaining. But Mahomes lurked.

The Chiefs’ resurgence began in 2013, when they hired Reid to reform a wayward franchise and modernize the offense. But the real inflection point came three springs later, when general manager Brett Veach, then a personnel executive, watching some Texas Tech film, called out to Reid that he had unearthed their next quarterback.

The Chiefs had not drafted one in the first round since 1983, acquiring former 49ers like Joe Montana and Elvis Grbac to fill the position instead, but Mahomes’ gravitational pull was stronger than titanium. Surrounded by teammates in the tunnel before warm-ups Sunday, Mahomes implored them, “Ain’t no better time to be great than today.”

He was, and they were. Forget about Kansas City’s inventory of postseason malfunctions, all those times the Chiefs stepped on a rake.

The excruciating wait is over: For Reid, who has won more games than only six coaches in NFL history, all of whom had won titles, and for Kansas City. The Chiefs, after 50 years, are champions again.

Ben Shpigel c.2020 The New York Times Company