Patrick Mahomes, who played at Texas Tech, will play in the Super Bowl for the third time in the last four years after the Chiefs defeated the Cincinnati Bengals, 23-20, at Arrowhead Stadium.
Mahomes — playing with a high ankle sprain — put the Chiefs in position to win the game on a scramble with less than 20 seconds left. He got the first down and went out of bounds, but was hit from behind by Cincinnati’s Joseph Ossai, which led to a 15-yard personal foul.
That set up the Chiefs up for a 45-yard game-winning field goal by Harrison Butker.
The victory sets up an All-Big 12 matchup at quarterback in the Super Bowl in two weeks. The Philadelphia Eagles are led by Jalen Hurts, who played his final year of college football at Oklahoma.
Mahomes went 20-for-43 for 326 yards passing and two touchdowns.
The former Red Raider already has a Super Bowl ring, having led the Chiefs to a Super Bowl title at the end of the 2019 season, his third in the NFL. The season before, in 2018, he was named the NFL Most Valuable Player after throwing for an NFL-best 50 touchdowns in his first full year as a starter.
He also led the Chiefs back to the Super Bowl after the 2020 season in an attempt to go back-to-back. But the Chiefs fell to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
With the win, the Chiefs got a measure of revenge for last year’s AFC Championship game, in which they lost to the Bengals to end their two-year run of Super Bowl appearances. The Bengals went on to lose to the Los Angeles Rams in the Super Bowl.
With Texas Tech, Mahomes threw for more than 11,000 yards in three seasons before heading to the NFL.
Earlier on Sunday, Hurts became the first Oklahoma Sooners quarterback to reach the Super Bowl after the Eagles beat San Francisco, 31-7. The Eagles beat San Francisco, led by rookie Brock Purdy, who played at Iowa State.
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