National Football League

How the Chiefs followed Nick Wright's recipe for an AFC Championship Game win

Published Jan. 29, 2024 9:02 p.m. ET

Nick Wright's Kansas City Chiefs are back in the Super Bowl, and they upset the Baltimore Ravens on the road almost exactly how the "First Things First" host predicted they would.

It was hardly a surprise when Wright predicted last week that his Chiefs would return to the Super Bowl for the fourth time in the past five seasons. But Wright's victory lap over Ravens-backing co-host Chris Broussard on Monday had just as much to do with the way the Chiefs won.

Mahomes leads Chiefs to Super Bowl, their 4th appearance in 5 years

Wright's Chiefs recipe for a win entering Sunday included:

Four sacks on Lamar Jackson
Three big throws from Patrick Mahomes
Two back-breaking Mahomes scrambles
One defensive pass interference on L'Jarius Sneed
Zero turnovers from Mahomes

Wright also predicted a final score of Chiefs 19, Ravens 13.

Sure enough, the game played out eerily similar to Wright's prediction:

The Chiefs sacked Lamar Jackson four times, including this strip-sack forced fumble by Charles Omenihu that Kansas City recovered.
Mahomes scrambled six times for 15 total yards, but that included multiple crucial scrambles for either first downs or short-yardage plays as well as several play-extending scrambles behind the line of scrimmage that resulted in key pass completions.
Sneed did not record a pass interference, but did have the biggest play of the game when he forced the ball from Ravens wide receiver Zay Flowers for another crucial fumble just before Flowers was set to cross the goal line for a touchdown.
Mahomes had zero turnovers.

The final score was Chiefs 17, Ravens 10.

Oh, and those three big throws from Mahomes? Wright broke each of those down on Monday.

Mahomes to Travis Kelce midway through the first quarter for the game's opening touchdown

"The greatest quarterback ever to the greatest tight end ever for the greatest playoff connection ever," Wright said.

To his point, Mahomes and Kelce extended their record for the most playoff touchdowns for a quarterback and pass-catcher duo in NFL history with 17, and Kelce broke Jerry Rice's record for most playoff receptions with his 152nd playoff catch later that game.

2. Mahomes to Kelce on 3rd-and-five early in the second quarter

"Critical play, it's Patrick Mahomes saying, ‘Lamar, this is what you try to be, I actually am,'" Wright said.

Mahomes scrambled for nearly 10 seconds in the pocket before finding a diving Kelce to pick up a key first down.

3. Mahomes to Marquez Valdes-Scantling late in the fourth quarter

"To ice to game, for the much-maligned MVS. … Patrick Mahomes believed in him," Wright said.

The long Mahomes pass to Valdez-Scantling, part of the Chiefs' oft-criticized wide receiver corps, on 3rd-and-nine did essentially seal the Chiefs win.

But Wright then turned his attention to the biggest x-factor of the game, the Chiefs' defense, which gave what he called a "masterclass."

"This defense that I told you was underrated, this defense that I told you that was doing what the Ravens were doing without forcing turnovers — but what if they start forcing turnovers?" Wright said.

Wright believes the Chiefs' defense not only underrated all season long, but also extremely underrated by his FS1 colleagues, who unanimously picked the Ravens to win before the game.

"We decided to do a cool thing in NFL analysis this year, which was pretend like this was the first year the NFL existed," Wright said. "And God forbid we trust the best coach, the best quarterback in the team with all the history. Nope, we have to act like no games had ever been played before September of 2023. But even under those auspices, it wasn't that everyone was picking, on this network and other networks, the Ravens. It was the scores. Do you know how many people I saw say 31-27, 38-24, 30-20?

"Are you aware of what the Chiefs defense is? And if you weren't watching them through the regular season, did you watch them play the two of the three highest scoring teams in the AFC in the playoffs — Miami and Buffalo — going into this game, and what they did to them? For now the last two months, what have they done? Kicked everybody's a-- on that side of the ball. … They made the MVP [Jackson] look pedestrian, so the actual MVP [Mahomes] could keep adding to his resume, which at this point, is impossible to believe."

As Wright pointed out, Mahomes currently ranks first in NFL playoff history in win percentage, total yards per game, touchdown-interception ratio, passer rating and completion percentage. Additionally, he has not only gone undefeated in the playoffs over the past two years, he has not even thrown an interception since the Chiefs lost to the Bengals in the 2021 AFC title game, making him the first quarterback to go that many playoff games (six) without getting picked off.

Now, Mahomes is one game away from adding the the biggest prize of all to that sparkling résumé — a sparkling Super Bowl ring.

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