How KC Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, NFL’s best artist, gave us his masterpiece

About a week or so ago, Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes had a conversation with one of his offensive linemen, Mike Remmers, about what it must’ve been like to play in one of the best playoff football games of this generation. Remmers had been with the Vikings for the Minneapolis Miracle, a 61-yard walk-off touchdown as time expired, and Mahomes wanted to imagine that environment. Wanted to know what it was like.

Days later, ironically, he doesn’t need to lean on a teammate’s memory anymore.

He has his own.

Created his own.

The NFL’s best artist presented the world his masterpiece Sunday, a 42-36 overtime victory against the Buffalo Bills in the AFC Divisional Round.

He supplied the go-ahead drive with 62 seconds left, the game-tying one as time in regulation expired and a game-winning drive in overtime. With the walk-off, to boot.

“To be in this moment, in this game, against that team, and to make a play to walk off a game at Arrowhead, I’ll remember this for the rest of my life,” Mahomes said.

Thirteen seconds. In a game full of its twists and turns — four lead changes after the two-minute warning — that’s what we’ll remember for years to come.

Thirteen seconds.

The Bills sideline had broken into a celebration when Gabriel Davis’ fourth touchdown catch offered them a three-point lead with just 13 seconds on the clock. They had built their roster for this game. Built their roster to beat this team. To beat this quarterback.

Why not enjoy the moment?

But you couldn’t help but wonder: How much time is too much time for Mahomes?

Thirteen seconds. One completion to Tyreek Hill. Another to Travis Kelce in which the two played backyard football to come up with an opening.

Two plays, 44 yards. What seems nearly impossible for 31 other men in the same vocation is not only possible but becoming the expected for Patrick Mahomes.

“When it’s grim,” coach Andy Reid said of the situation confronting Mahomes, “Go be the Grim Reaper.”

Four years ago, Tom Brady walked into a losing Chiefs locker room to offer encouragement to Mahomes after an AFC Championship Game. He had been that Grim Reaper for so many before. It will one day be your turn, Brady had said, in part, to Mahomes.

What many forget: Mahomes had offered us our first glimpse that night of what came Sunday, four years later, on the same field. He’d used 31 seconds — with only one timeout — to put his team in range for a game-tying field goal.

A coin-toss made it a footnote.

For some.

Mahomes has not forgotten. Staring at 13 seconds on the clock Sunday, Mahomes recalled the drive from a game he lost.

He began this one like any other. Let’s be great, he said in the huddle.

And then he was.

“He just does that effortlessly,” Reid said. “When it gets tough, he’s going to be there battling.”

With 13 seconds left, you couldn’t be sure it was over.

When a silver coin landed on heads, you knew it was.

The Chiefs cruised so easily in overtime — 8 plays, 75 yards — that it will rightly bring up conversations about whether the NFL needs to re-visit its overtime rules. Because offering that guy that situation — score and win — simply does not seem fair. That’s where we are now.

Forget the Bills had Mahomes pinned at his own 25-yard line, 13 seconds on the clock, just needing to hold him to fewer than what, 40 yards?

Unfair.

Place Mahomes in the toughest of situations, and you might see something you have not seen before.

Does anyone remember this is the same Bills team that stifled Mahomes — the worst loss of his regular season career, to that point — just 105 days ago?

He did.

There are those close to Mahomes who believe his own failures provide his greatest motivation. That the reason you saw this kind of night from Mahomes is because you saw that kind of night back in October. He spent the week preparing for the Bills defensive scheme that had frustrated him in October, and responded by willingly using his legs to get first downs.

The Bills adjusted. They called off the zones and went man-to-man. So Mahomes tore that apart too.

He finished 33 of 44 for 378 yards and three touchdowns. He threw for nearly 200 yards after the fourth quarter’s two-minute warning arrived.

This was the league’s No. 1 defense.

“He doesn’t flinch,” Reid said.

It’s an innate quality that we use as a crutch. How else to explain how he takes the most dire of circumstances and turns them into brilliance?

“He definitely doesn’t flinch,” Tyreek Hill repeated.

In a week, he’ll play inside Arrowhead Stadium in an AFC Championship Game for the fourth straight season — something no quarterback has ever done. He’s 26. He’ll try to send the Chiefs to a third straight Super Bowl.

All that stands in front of him: One more team that got him earlier this season.