CHARLOTTE, N.C. — After the Kansas City Chiefs secured their fifth walk-off victory of the season Sunday, quarterback Patrick Mahomes said he will take the wins any way he can get them but would rather they be less stressful at the end.
“You want to have some blowouts,” Mahomes said after the Chiefs beat the Carolina Panthers 30-27 on rookie Spencer Shrader’s 31-yard field goal as time expired. “You want be a little calmer in the fourth quarter. I’ve always said it can be a good thing as you get to the playoffs and later in the season, just knowing that you’ve been in those moments before and knowing how to kind of attack it.
“But I would love to win a game [before] the very last play.”
The 10-1 Chiefs have eight wins by one score, tying an NFL record for the most by any team in the first 11 games of a season. Half of their wins have come down to the final play. One of those victories was decided by a blocked field goal, one on an overtime touchdown, one when an opposing receiver missed getting a foot down in the end zone by inches and now two by field goals.
Mahomes led the Chiefs on the winning drive against the Panthers. It started with two short pass completions, but the big play was a 33-yard Mahomes scramble that put the Chiefs in field goal range.
Mahomes by his own admission isn’t the fastest or most elusive quarterback when he runs. But he’s effective.
“He has a great feel for the game,” coach Andy Reid said. “He knows by the coverage where guys are and what they’re trying to do and accomplish with the coverage and he can feel the front.”
Mahomes has made some long runs for the Chiefs late in some of their most notable victories. The longest play on their winning drive in Super Bowl LVII against the Philadelphia Eagles was a 26-yard Mahomes run, and the longest play on the winning drive in their Super Bowl LVIII win against the San Francisco 49ers last season was a 19-yard Mahomes run.
“It’s not like I pre-plan that stuff,” Mahomes said. “It’s just whenever it comes down to it and you’ve got to make the play, I feel like I try to go out there and make the play, and that’s why I feel like it happens kind of later in games sometimes.
“You don’t want to slide. You have to kind of put your body out there knowing that you can take hits and stuff like that, but we’ve been able to make some big runs and some big moments.”
Shrader joined the Chiefs two weeks ago as an emergency replacement for Harrison Butker, who had surgery for a torn meniscus. Shrader kicked in two games, one for the Indianapolis Colts and one for the New York Jets, before coming to the Chiefs in time for a game against the Buffalo Bills.
“I knew that I’d be getting an opportunity, so I just tried to stay calm, understanding that it was going to come at some point,” Shrader said. “Then when it did come I was ready. That comes from a belief in the team that they’re going to get you in that situation, and then you go out there and just knock it through.”
Butker has made many a clutch kick for the Chiefs, including their other walk-off field goal this season, a 51-yarder against the Cincinnati Bengals.
The Chiefs said they believed in Shrader but couldn’t know for certain how he would respond in a pressure situation that’s not new for this year’s Chiefs but is new for him.
“That’s a whole lot of pressure for a new guy,” Reid said. “He’s in here replacing for us right now a future Hall of Famer. That’s not easy to do in these games.”
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