Mahomes, vs. Allen again, evokes Brady-Manning

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — As a young football fan, Patrick Mahomes watched the great quarterback rivalry of the time, Tom Brady vs. Peyton Manning, and hoped that someday he could be a part of something similar.

Maybe now he is. On Sunday, Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs will face quarterback Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills for the third time in the past four postseasons. This is in addition to the regular-season meetings in each of the past four seasons.

“We’ve played in a lot of big games,” Mahomes said Wednesday. “I’m excited for the challenge. I grew up watching those [Brady-Manning] games and remember how many memories I have from that, and hopefully we can play in these great games as well and give memories to the kids that come up behind us.”

Mahomes and Allen are friendly. They were teammates two years ago against Brady and Aaron Rodgers in The Match, an annual celebrity golf event in Las Vegas.

“When you compete against your friends, you almost want to win even more because of it,” Mahomes said. “Josh is a great dude. I respect the way he plays football and just the guy that he is. But when two guys that are ultracompetitive that are friends off the field go up against each other, we obviously both want to win. We see each other in the offseason, and you want to have a little bit of those bragging rights.”

Mahomes is 2-0 against Allen in the playoffs, including an epic divisional round game two seasons ago the Chiefs won 42-36 in overtime. Mahomes and Allen combined to throw seven touchdown passes and for more than 700 yards.

Mahomes is 1-3 against Allen in the regular season. The Bills have won three straight, all at Arrowhead Stadium, and beat the Chiefs 20-17 this season in Week 14.

“The Bills are a great challenge,” Mahomes said. “I think everybody understands that they’ve gotten my number a lot of times. We’ve been lucky enough to get them in the playoffs, but they beat us earlier this year. So we understand that we’re going to have to play our best football to win the game, especially at their place, but it’s not about ending someone’s season for us. It’s about just advancing, trying to find a way to survive and advance and get to the next round, and whatever that takes this weekend we’re going to try to do and try to go out there and win a football game.”

Sunday’s game at Highmark Stadium will be the first road playoff game of Mahomes’ career. Mahomes’ only career game in Buffalo came in 2020, when there were no fans in the stadium due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I’ve been lucky enough to play a lot of games at home at Arrowhead Stadium and just everything’s [fallen] that way,” Mahomes said. “Now we get the great opportunity to go on the road, play in a hostile environment, one that I haven’t been able to play with fans in the stands, and even though I know it’s going to be hostile and there’s going to be people talking trash and everything like that, I’m excited for it because it’s one of the best environments in football, and you want to do that, when you grow up watching these games, is playing the best environments and see what it’s like.”

The Chiefs had a better record away from Arrowhead this season, going 6-2 outside Kansas City and 6-4 at home including last week’s wild-card win over the Miami Dolphins.

“I think it’s just coach [Andy] Reid,” Mahomes said. “He preaches communication, and you have to have nonverbal communication whenever you’re playing on the road, and we try to do a good job of that, of just being able to be on the same page, being able to execute at a high level and then not letting anything be too positive or too negative.

“It’s just staying even-keeled and going about your business the right way. I think that’s important on the road because it seems like one bad play is even magnified more and a big play is magnified more. Staying with the process is something that Coach Reid preaches, and we do a great job of it.”