Patrick Mahomes is the ultimate X factor

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Call clickgrainger.com or just stop by. Grainger. For the ones who get it done. Brooke Pryor, ESPN covers the Steelers, covers the National Football League. I don't know if you're aware of that, this Brooke, but Patrick Mahomes is good at football. What?

Yeah, that's what I have heard. Is that the primary reason why the San Francisco 49ers were runners-up? You know, I guess it's so hard to say though, I keep going back to my Super Bowl prediction that I don't think my full answer for my MVP prediction ended up being printed on ESPN.com, but my prediction was that the Chiefs would win, Patrick Mahomes would be the MVP, but in parentheses I said, but it really should be Steve Spagnuolo, but coordinators can't win MVP.

And sure enough, that's exactly what happened. I mean, I think obviously Mahomes is a big reason for it, but like, man, he's got to like cut the MVP trophy into pieces, like, you know, in Mean Girls when Katie Heron snaps the crown and throws it out to the crowd. But he's like, got to cut it in half and get half of that to Spags for just the way the defense kept the team in the game, especially when the offense couldn't figure out what the heck it was doing in the first half. They used to give you like a, like a car or a truck when you won MVP, maybe if they still do that, maybe, maybe he can give that to Spags.

Oh, see that, that would work or like send Spags to Disneyland and Patrick just go home or maybe let Spags come with them. But I mean, Spags deserves so much credit and Chris Jones had an amazing game, especially in the second half. I just think that the defense as a whole, I mean, football is such an offensive game and obviously like that's why quarterbacks seem to win the MVP every year. But this game was all about the defense and then, you know, having Patrick Mahomes helped.

Yeah, it does. It was funny. I was watching this a lot of the postgame coverage and Jones was asked, actually at this point I was watching ESPN, I was watching Berman and Booger McFarland, which Chris Berman was in his element, man. They were, these guys were excited to talk to him. And was it whether Travis Kelsey was like dropping Berman references, circle the wagons and Berman was like, yeah, talk to me about it. But Jones, they asked Jones about that third and four play. I think it was a third and four. I don't remember which one it was where Jones was unblocked and Jones is like, yep, God is good. That's the first thing I thought of when they didn't block me on that play because there were a couple of sequences where it looked like Kansas City had not about out prepared, but out schemed San Francisco when San Francisco had the ball.

Yeah, 100%. I think that the story of the Chiefs' season is the small adjustments I think that was made on the offensive and the defensive side throughout the course of the season when things weren't going right. And then that all culminated in the Super Bowl. And I, you know, I'm so conflicted about how I feel about Kyle Shanahan because he has coached so well and has assembled such an impressive collection of guys, but just can't get it done in the Super Bowl. And at that point, like, well, does it even matter what you've done all season if you can't win the big thing, if you can't have your team prepared for some of these situational moments in the Super Bowl? And the Chiefs just showed like, this is what happens when you've been to this many Super Bowls and been in this many tight situation, right? And Chris Jones is one of my all-time favorite players to interview, to be around.

He's just a ball of energy and is so happy all the time. And so, especially given the contract situation to hold out all of that, I'm pretty sure he gets a significant bonus for not only being in the Super Bowl, but winning the Super Bowl. Like, every play he had was just further approved. But like, he bet on himself and he's cashing in in Vegas.

How appropriate? No question about that. All right, so about preparation. Here's what Kyle Shanahan had to say about the decision to take the ball first in overtime. He said, we wanted the ball third.

He talked about, we had discussed it and we had talked to our analytics people. He says, we wanted the ball third. If both teams matched and scored, we wanted to be the ones who had the chance to go win. Got that field goal, so we knew we had to hold them to at least a field goal.

And if we did, then we thought it was in our hands after that. Didn't he think maybe that we just played with fire and didn't get burned at the end of regulation? Where Kansas City was this close to scoring a touchdown and beating them there. Basically, if there was more time, if there were three more seconds at that point at the end of regulation, they probably would have run another play. Was Kyle there for that?

That's my curiosity. You're not going to get the ball third if you kick a field goal, is my thinking. So, did they really think that through? You know, to me, when I hear the 49ers players saying, oh, we didn't realize that there was a change in the overtime rules in the Super Bowl or in the playoffs. I think that that is just such an indictment of Shanahan. And again, he is an offensive whiz and does prepare his team so well, but it almost seems like he didn't account for all of the variations of things that could happen, which is a huge issue in the Super Bowl, especially when the Chiefs are saying, no, we've known what we were going to do and what we needed to do for weeks. And I think that when you're playing the Chiefs, you can't start predicting what's going to happen three possessions ahead of time.

You have to take it. When I think about coaching advice or coaching cliches, it's always one game at a time, one play at a time, one drive at a time. And Shanahan kind of broke that, like the one thing you can't do in coaching and that's look ahead, like there's planning and there's being prepared. And there's, like you said, putting a cart before the horse there and planning for the third drive.

But like, you've got to get through the first two first. And so I think that that was just a really bad decision by the 49ers. You know, I was watching with my husband and I was like, I don't understand their decision to take the ball. And he said, well, maybe it's because their defense is so tired.

They just were out there like I kind of get that. But man, when I look at the fact that they barely survived that Chiefs last drive, you're going to give Patrick Mahomes a chance to win the game in overtime in the Super Bowl. What are you thinking? I don't care what your analytics say. You have to factor in Mahomes and that just changes the equation entirely. There's not an analytic for that. No, there's not. He's the ultimate X factor.

You simply can't calculate that. Brooke Friar from ESPN is joining us at B.E. Friar on Twitter. The for the ones who work hard to ensure their crew can always go the extra mile and the ones who get in early so everyone can go home on time. There's Granger offering professional grade supplies backed by product experts so you can quickly and easily find what you need.

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Sign up for your one dollar a month trial at Shopify dot com slash listen. The way Kansas it rather the way San Francisco played the game. I also thought that they didn't run the ball at all in the third quarter. They didn't even attend. They attempted one running play until before San Francisco in their first three possessions before San Francisco took the lead.

And then they got back to doing what they did from that point on. They were really good. Did you like Brock Purdy's overall game last night? I did. I didn't think that he did anything to lose the game. Now, is that what you want out of a quarterback in the Super Bowl?

Probably not. But, you know, that's my husband. I got in a little bit of Brock Purdy discourse after the game and we had to shut it down because according to him, his timeline said that Brock Purdy was terrible. You don't win a Super Bowl with Brock Purdy.

And I very much don't think that's the case. I think that Purdy played well enough that they should have won to me again. I go back to Shanahan and taking the ball out of Christian McCaffrey's hands was made me want to pull my hair. And I was like, he forgot.

Oh, yeah, that's right. Two years ago, we did trade for Christian McCaffrey so that we could win a Super Bowl. And yet we have him.

We're in the Super Bowl. We're just not going to use him anymore. I think the fact that Purdy didn't throw an interception, he didn't have a turnover. I mean, I think that he played well enough that the 49ers should have won. He doesn't have to be an MVP. He doesn't have to be in the conversation with Patrick Holmes and Lamar Jackson and all those guys. But he was good enough and that should win a Super Bowl in almost every instance, except when you have a cheat code on the other side that can just go to that next level. When I used to play video games, and I'm not a Madden person or any of the modern video games, we used to go into hyperspace playing asteroids. That's Patrick Mahomes. Like, all of a sudden, everything, you're just, you're gone.

Now you're over here. That's what Mahomes is like. Who would have been? Had San Francisco, had they picked up the first down right after the two-minute warning and regulation and ended the game on a field goal? Who would have been the MVP for the 49ers? Oh, Juwan Jennings.

I think so, too. That's my favorite part of Super Bowls like that, to that point, is there's always this, like, surprise hero that comes up. And Juwan Jennings, I don't think, I would have loved to know what the pregame odds were of him winning Super Bowl MVP because I'm going to guess they were not anywhere near, like, the top seven. Had to be something in the neighborhood of 50 to 1. Had to be.

Oh, yeah. And the fact that he threw the first touchdown pass would not have guessed that. And then caught the second one, had some just really big plays. To me, he came up big in these crucial moments. And if not him, my other kind of unsung hero was Chris Conley.

I mean, a special teamer in that situation is probably not going to win MVP. But he was so, I think, really good at the situational football, the special teams tackle he had. A third or fourth quarter, he also had downed a punt at, like, the two-yard line, had an 18-yard catch. And to me, I love a, I don't think that Chris Conley's going to call it a revenge game, but I do kind of like that revenge narrative or play against your old team. When I was covering the Chiefs, Chris Conley was there, and I remember talking to him, great guy, played at Georgia, really smart, thoughtful player who I think added a lot to the Chiefs. But they had, that was back when, like, they did have almost like a 49ers type cast of offensive threats. And he eventually, you know, left in pre-agency. And so for him to be playing against his former team was just, I love a storyline like that.

And I think he really stepped up in the moment. So those would have been my two guys, which is just wild to say, would not have picked either of those guys before the game. You could have, you could have wagered on a wide receiver, no, a non-quarterback to throw a touchdown pass, which is a, I mean, it's not a huge long shot, but it's like, it was like 15 to 1. That a non, yeah, that, that would have been a, a wonderful value for those people who think about it in these terms.

Final, final thing for Brooke Pryor from ESPN at BE Pryor on Twitter. We throw around the dynasty word a lot. Is there any reason why we shouldn't consider, even if they weren't to win another one, is there any reason why we shouldn't consider this a dynasty? None.

Absolutely none. Because not only did they win back to back, but they're three and five years. They were in it. Another one of those years of loss. I mean, this is a team that this is supposed to be the year that they were bad, that they weren't gonna, you know, make the super bowl much less win it. I mean, they had a losing record in December. They had to go on the road for the majority of the playoffs when they do all of those things. It's a dynasty because they, they did it in back to back years. And to me, the, the moment that made me laugh out loud in the post game was when Patrick Mahone said, we're not underdogs were the Kansas city chief Superbowl champions.

And I just, I said, yes, we know that we've been saying that all year. I don't care what your record is. I don't care where it feels like momentum is at no point. Am I going to buy the, where the underdogs were? You can't be the underdog and a villain. And that's what it felt like the, the chiefs tried to be.

Um, but you know what, shoot, whatever works, whatever tip you've got to keep on your shoulder to win the big one. I mean, this is a team that don't let their record ever fool you. As long as Patrick Mahone is the quarterback. As long as Andy Reed is a head coach.

And I think even after Andy Reed, you know, eventually retires, I don't get the sense that that is happening. Uh, now that he's won another Superbowl, but, um, as long as, as those guys are in place, the chiefs to me will, will always be the Superbowl favorites. I don't care what Vegas says.

I don't care what the odds say. The chiefs are, are inevitable and they are absolutely a dynasty. No, there's, there's no good in a salary cap year where it's, especially when you have high price players and it's hard to keep everybody when you pay big ticket items like your quarterback, although, uh, the salary cap continues to go up. And Mahone's contract in terms of how it looks, you know, next to the salary cap is going to get less and less, um, obtrusive, although, uh, he's probably going to get refinanced, uh, if you will.

Uh, that he'll, he'll get a raise, uh, because he's now, uh, he's going to start falling behind in terms of contract, but that's all right. Uh, Brooke Pryor, we should all have those problems. Uh, Brooke Pryor from BSPN. Hey, thank you very much for, uh, for this. And, uh, since we know where you are, uh, I'll call you again.

Absolutely. See ya. Thank you.

Brooke Pryor, uh, here on the Adam Gold show. Without the ones like you who work tirelessly to keep things running, everything would suddenly stop. Hospitals, factories, schools, and power plants, they all depend on you. No matter the weather, emergency, or time of day, you're the ones who get it done. At Grainger, we're here for you with professional grade industrial supplies. Count on real-time product availability and fast delivery. Call clickgrainger.com or just stop by. Grainger, for the ones who get it done.