SANTA CLARA — To be the man, you have to beat the man.
But the San Francisco 49ers have not beaten Patrick Mahomes.
And in the third quarter of Sunday’s Super Bowl rematch between the Chiefs and 49ers, as the Kansas City quarterback scampered down the sideline with his trademark, toddler-like knock-kneed gait, with not one, not two, but four 49ers defenders missing their clear-cut opportunities to bring him down as he gained 33 yards and set up Kansas City’s third touchdown of the game — the game-winner, it would turn out — it was fair for the Niners, their fans, and the world wonder:
Will they ever?
For the 49ers, it’s a question so fundamental, so consequential, that the answer can tear a team apart.
And right now, seven years of evidence points towards “No.”
“There’s no way to sugarcoat this. We got our ass kicked today,” Niners head coach Kyle Shanahan said following his team’s 28-18 home loss.
The Niners can’t stop Mahomes in the Super Bowl, having lost both matchups with the Chiefs in 2019 and last season. They can’t stop him in the regular season, either, having lost their previous three games, with the last two coming in blowouts at home.
He is their bogeyman, their final boss, their supreme bugaboo. And while he and his team might play in the opposite conference and only face the Niners sporadically — Sunday was the fifth matchup, regular and post-season, since Shanahan became San Francisco’s head coach — his presence and his still-unblemished record against the Niners expose a serious vulnerability in San Francisco’s already fragile psyche.
Had the Niners finally beaten Mahomes on Sunday — no matter the circumstances — they would have exited Levi’s Stadium feeling like the favorites to achieve the team’s singular goal, winning the Super Bowl. They circled this game on the schedule when it was released — it was the ultimate measuring-stick contest — and they would have been justifiably riding high with a victory.
The inverse must be true in a loss.
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Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
