Decided to take a screen cap of the broadcast's skycam view of 4th down, this is as far as Josh got. By the way, there were 13 minutes left. Both teams scored again after this play, and Josh got the ball at the end of the game, down 3 with plenty of time to drive down the field and slay the Chiefs.

https://i.ibb.co/MyRS9BR8/fourthdown.png

Yeah I didn't mention it yesterday but it took me a bit to find the play in the All 22. It's not broadcast footage so there's no clock or down and distance. I was looking way too late in the game because the controversy had convinced me it was critical.

It happened at the beginning of the 4th quarter.

Nick Wright pointed this out, and he's not wrong -- SOMEONE is going to get left out.

There are maybe 10 years worth of Championships for the present crop of similarly situated QBs.

Allen, Burrow, Jackson, Herbert -- all out of the AFC and all with probably 10 years left in their window.

Let's say Mahomes makes only 3 more SBs over the next decade. That leaves 7 AFC championships for ALL of those guys combined. And presumes that nobody like Stroud or Drake Maye or Trevor Lawrence makes a leap.

At some point the math just won't work anymore. There aren't enough AFC championships to go around, to say NOTHING of the fact that they would STILL have to go to the SB and win that. And with some QB talent starting to show up in the NFC, even that's a less and less likely scenario for those guys going forward.

And that's based on a couple presumptions (that they have 10 years at/near prime AND Mahomes only goes to 3 of the next 10 SBs) that are pretty conservative based on recent trends and playstyles.

There IS a genuine zero sum problem for them. And yeah, it's becoming a scarcity problem as well.

They're running out of opportunities.

I'm not going to lie, if the roles were reversed and we still hadn't won a SB with Patrick and were 0-4 against Buffalo in the yoffs... I'd be going batshit crazy too.

Which we should understand at a profound level. How many times through the years did we think this was "our one shot". It's less so with a good QB, but even if we only won 1, I guarantee there would be threads here about wasting Mahomes.

It's a thing. The thing about it is finding the right place to put your angst. We did it for years (King Carl and his band of re-treads).

Nick's analogy yesterday that Allen, Lamar, and Burrow are essentially just supporting characters of the Mahomes era is so true and yet cuts so deep I imagine.

Each year the pressure increases a few more ticks. You don't wanna be in Elway's situation where you've gotta get it done at the very end or it isn't happening.

I can't remember when the we're wasting Mahomes shit started. After the Tampa Super Bowl? IDK. It was a thing, and we have Mahomes.

Oh my God lmao I completely forgot that narrative. The meltdowns after we traded Tyreek were in another level.

I definitely remember it after the Bengals debacle. Was even guilty of thinking it myself.

"How can you only win one Super Bowl with Mahomes, Kelce, and Tyreek????" was a thing after we traded him away.

Where can you access that footage? I don’t think I’ve seen that vantage point and would love to watch the whole play.

I think that was the TV broadcast.

I bet it was after the Bengals implosion.

And in the case of Allen and Jackson, 10 years is pushing it because at 28, in 5 years their running ability will likely drop off quickly. All those guys are gonna need strong team and coaching support at that point. The guys who've won mid 30s and later were no longer able to carry a team the way they can presently. And new young talent comes in every year.

That's why the sense of urgency. On both the Bengals and Bills boards it's always "the coaches and organization wasted another year of his prime". In reality Mahomes is wasting their prime .

That makes sense. My son wanted dada to get him down for bed so I ended up listening to almost the entire fourth quarter.

How crazy is it that the last time we lost a playoff game, it wasn't like the QB just outdueled Mahomes (even though the media tried to frame it that way)....

It took Mahomes playing the worst, most out of character half of football he's played for them to lose in OVERTIME.

In my biased opinion, it just feels like beating the Chiefs in a playoff game is at least 10% harder than beating New England ever was. Because Mahomes is consistently so ****ing good in these games.

EDIT: Turns out my instinct was right. Patrick's playoff win percentage is 85%, Brady's was 73%.