For a moment it looked like Kansas City Chiefs’ ascension to the AFC Conference Round was on the rocks.
Star Quarterback Patrick Mahomes would plead with the Chiefs’ coaching staff to stay on during the Playoff game, after suffering an ankle injury against the Jacksonville Jaguars.
They would relent and Chiefs would go on to score 27 – 20 against the Jags and their route towards revenge against the Cincinnati Bengals this Sunday.
It was probably a good thing they did.
FIRST QUARTER
This was a game that was unpredictable from the get-go. The First Quarter of the game saw both teams come out strong.
Chiefs would open the scoring with a Touchdown Pass from Travis Kelce and Extra Point from Harrison Butker.
Jags would not allow Chiefs to dominate and they reciprocated with their own Touchdown Pass from Wide Receiver Christian Kirk and Extra Point kick from Kicker Riley Patterson.
Check out our build up for the Divisional Round here
Mahomes Tackle
While the scores were level, the Chiefs were more concerned about Mahomes. The Quarterback twisted his ankle following a tackle.
Jags defenders Arden Key and Corey Peters tackled him and one of their legs made connection with Mahomes’ ankle and he started hobbling.
Mahomes would receive an MRI X-Ray and when nothing came back as a warning sign, he patched up and got let back into the game for the Second.
Chad Henne would jump for Mahomes, leading a 98-yard touchdown drive.
‘I’m not coming out of a playoff game unless they take me out,’ Mahomes would say later.
SECOND QUARTER
Chiefs would launch into the Second Quarter with a Field Goal in the first minute from Butker.
Kelce would collect the ball and run for the Jag’s endzone delivering a Touchdown Pass to bump up the scoreboard. Butker would be there to successfully punt the ball for an Extra Point.
Patterson would manage to scrape 3 points back for the Jags with a Field Goal in the 14th minute.
THIRD QUARTER
The Jags would not allow the Chiefs to penetrate their defence and it would only be Butker’s Field Goal just before the 15th, that would grant the Chiefs three extra points.
FOURTH QUARTER
The Fourth and Final Quarter of the game would be the most dramatic of the game. They opened their counter-attack with a Touchdown Run and an Extra Point in the first five minutes of the game.
The Chiefs were quick to react delivering their set just before the 8th.
The Jags had some good chances to deliver more but they quickly squandered their chances in the last minutes of the game.
Initially Patterson would deliver a Field Goal just before the last five minutes and his team-mates would make last-gasp attempts on the Chief’s lines.
Their very last attempt was successfully intercepted by the Chiefs with just 24 seconds left on the clock.
Who knows… had they managed the touchdown, maybe we’d into an overtime situation.
A big year
Following the game, Jags’ Quarterback Trevor Lawrence would say that no one in the team was satisfied with the result but the game did pave the way for a much better performance.
The team had grown from its appalling performance last year. In the 2021/22 season, Jags only managed 3 wins and 14 losses. This season they managed 9 wins and 8 losses before dropping out.
‘This year was huge for this organization, for our city, for our franchise moving forward.
‘It sets the bar of who we’re going to be and what we’re going to do moving forward, and that’s the mindset. We won’t settle for less than that.
‘We got a taste of it being here, but there’s more left, and we all feel that,’ Lawrence would say.
