Can an injured Patrick Mahomes get it done in AFC Championship?

It’s to be determined just how much of a factor Patrick Mahomes’ high ankle sprain is going to cause him, but we can be sure he’s going to give it his all.

Did your heart sink when you saw Patrick Mahomes starting to limp? It seemed almost unfair. The entire world had just watched Mahomes put up what was arguably his best drive of the entire year and then it all came to a screeching halt for the Kansas City Chiefs offense.

Seriously, that first drive was incredible against the Jaguars. The Chiefs looked pretty much unstoppable for the first time all season. And then a Jaguars player rolled up on The Franchise.

But The Franchise didn’t give up.

“I’m not coming out of a playoff game unless they take me out,” Mahomes said after the game.

He sounded like Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street shouting, “I’m not f—ing leaving!”

But just because Mahomes wasn’t leaving, it didn’t mean he was fine. He seemed to get better in the second half, but he was still in a lot of pain and hobbling around. It’s been clearly established that a one-legged Mahomes is better than most quarterbacks in the league, but can he be better than Joe Burrow on Sunday?

Look, the reality is, the Cincinnati Bengals looked really good against the Buffalo Bills. Now I still haven’t decided if they were really that good or if the Buffalo Bills were just that bad, but it doesn’t matter. The Bengals made it look easy, cutting through the Buffalo defense like a hot knife through butter.

Is the Chiefense better than the Bills’ defense? Man, I don’t know. I’d like to say yes. But we have a lot of rookies who are going to be tasked with stopping the Bengals receivers – something the defense as a whole hasn’t shown it can do over the last two years. Our only hope is that Frank ‘Skywalker’ Clark, and Christ ‘Solo’ Jones can tee up against a vulnerable Bengals offensive line.

Whether or not they can, the Chiefs are still going to have to score points. This means they’ll need Patrick Mahomes, hobbled and all, to go out there and be superman. Can he? Yeah! Has he? Yeah! Will he? I have no idea.

I’ve given up putting anything past Mahomes at this point. The dude is tough as nails. No matter where you stand on Lamar Jackson’s decision to ‘sit out’ of his team’s playoff game, you have to admit that Mahomes’ decision to gut it out in tons of pain gave him a few extra points in the “He’s a better quarterback” column.

On top of that, Mahomes has shown that he will literally will his team to win if needed. Have we forgotten the 2019-20 Super Bowl run? The late great Terez Paylor famously called the Texans game the “over my dead body” game for Mahomes, and the play against the Titans the following week? “The over my dead body play.”

Will we see another “over my dead body” moment from Patrick Mahomes? I hope so. I’m not going to pretend that I don’t have my doubts about the Chiefs being able to win this game. I seriously do. But one thing I don’t doubt is that when the game is all said and done, Patrick Mahomes will have put it all on the line.