PHOENIX — When it comes to Super Bowls, Patrick Mahomes knows the euphoria of a victory and the frustration of a defeat.
He said the memories of the Kansas City Chiefs‘ Super Bowl loss are more powerful than those of their win.
“The win is amazing,” Mahomes said Monday at the Super Bowl’s opening night. “It’s one of the best moments of your entire life. You take away all the positives from that. But that loss, that stings. That motivates you for years. What it’s done for me is it’s motivated me to be back in this game again. I want to make sure that I can have that winning feeling and not that losing one because that losing feeling is one you’ll never forget.”
Mahomes and the Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LIV but lost the next season to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Super Bowl LV.
The Chiefs will play in their third Super Bowl in four years Sunday against the Philadelphia Eagles.
“I think the Super Bowl win, I just learned how special it is to have a team that really believes in each other and can overcome the obstacles,” Mahomes said. “We were down in every single playoff game that year, and to be able to do that [and rally for a victory], it was special. In the loss, you learned that you can’t take things for granted. You can’t come to a game and not have every box checked. I thought we did, but obviously we didn’t and we lost that game and you had to use it as motivation to get back here.”
Mahomes suffered a high ankle sprain in the Chiefs’ divisional round playoff win over the Jacksonville Jaguars. He said Monday he thought he would be much closer to full strength in the Super Bowl than he was in the AFC Championship Game against the Cincinnati Bengals but acknowledged that practice wasn’t the best test for that.
“You won’t know until you get out there in the game,” Mahomes said. “I’m going to push it. I’ll try to leave it all on the line. I think you all saw that in the last game that I played. But it’s about relying on your teammates and I’ve got a lot of great teammates around me and I’m not trying to do too much. But I’ll definitely be in a better spot [than] when I was out there last week.”