LAS VEGAS — Patrick Mahomes clustered on the sideline with the Kansas City Chiefs’ offensive coaches and backup quarterbacks, discussing the play that would determine Super Bowl LVIII. A season pockmarked with slumps and sloppiness had reached the brink once more. One yard would decide whether the game would push deeper into overtime or meet a sudden end, whether the Chiefs could mint the NFL’s newest dynasty or become this city’s latest broken dream.

The Chiefs had called time out while facing fourth and one. They trailed the San Francisco 49ers by three points. The ball rested on Kansas City’s 34-yard line. The men decided on a play that would give Mahomes options. Based on how San Francisco defended it, Mahomes could hand off the ball, pass or run himself. Backup quarterback Blaine Gabbert had played only one season with Mahomes, but as he watched Mahomes trot back on to the field, he realized there would be no choice at all.

“I knew once we called that play, Patrick was taking it into his own hands,” Gabbert said.

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Minutes later, after Mahomes had proved his backup prophetic, a Super Bowl unlike any other concluded with a familiar feeling. “Extreme joy,” Mahomes said later. The Chiefs’ 25-22 victory ended with a touchdown pass. Mahomes sprinted down the sideline as confetti floated from the Allegiant Stadium ceiling. He dropped his helmet at the 35-yard line and collapsed to the ground, rolling on the turf with hands on his head.

Most every small boy in America who lays his hands on a football dreams of the scenario: Down by a field goal, in your own territory, one drive to win the Super Bowl. Most every quarterback never lives out the chance. Mahomes experienced it twice in the span of less than an hour Sunday night. He led two epic drives — one for a game-tying field goal at the end of the fourth quarter, another for a game-winning touchdown in the second Super Bowl overtime ever played — that made the Chiefs the first repeat champions since the New England Patriots 19 years ago.

“One of the greatest Super Bowls I’ve ever witnessed,” Chiefs owner Clark Hunt said.

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Mahomes has surpassed any imagination. At 28, he has won three Super Bowl MVPs. Tom Brady, Joe Montana and Terry Bradshaw are the only quarterbacks who have hoisted more Lombardi Trophies than he has. In seven NFL seasons, six as a starter, he has built a career that places him among the all-time greats.

“I hope people remember not only the greatness that we have in the field, but the way that we’ve done it,” Mahomes said. “We’ve had a lot of great playoff runs. But this is going to be up there, because [of] just the way that we kind of continue to battle whenever times weren’t great.”

In the two months between the week of Halloween and Christmas, the Chiefs derailed. Their offense malfunctioned. Receivers dropped passes, highlighted by the potentially game-tying bomb that slipped through Marquez Valdes-Scantling’s hands on a Sunday night in Green Bay. The Chiefs went 3-5 over a stretch that culminated in a Christmas Day throttling at the hands of the Las Vegas Raiders.

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“I don’t think many people probably thought we’d be standing here talking about a Super Bowl champ on Christmas Day,” offensive coordinator Matt Nagy said. “Our guys are so mentally strong. They’re resilient. No one complains, points fingers, any of that stuff. That’s why we’re Super Bowl champs.”

As Travis Kelce’s romance with Taylor Swift turned the franchise into a worldwide attraction, its offense cratered. The Chiefs leaned on a defense loaded with intelligent, versatile players whom coordinator Steve Spagnuolo deployed in complex, aggressive schemes. Even as results suggested they were limping on offense, the Chiefs never stopped believing they were actually improving.

“To battle through that adversity and come out better on the other side, I think it prepared us for the playoffs,” Mahomes said.

In the postseason, the Chiefs became the Chiefs. They crushed the Miami Dolphins at frozen Arrowhead Stadium. In consecutive weeks, they beat Josh Allen in Buffalo and Lamar Jackson in Baltimore in the first two road playoff games of Mahomes’s career. The Ravens entered the AFC championship game as a decisive favorite, and oddsmakers made Kansas City a slight underdog again in the Super Bowl.

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The designation rankled the Chiefs, and that ire bubbled to the surface Saturday inside a conference room at the Westin Lake Las Vegas, the Chiefs’ headquarters for the week. Coach Andy Reid tapped three veterans to speak to the team. Defensive lineman Chris Jones told his teammates to play as one unit, that unselfishness is their greatest strength. Mahomes instructed them to each be the best versions of themselves, nothing more. Kelce spoke with such fervency, he left some in the room fighting tears. His abridged message: They were not underdogs. They were champions.

“We know how to go and get it,” Kelce recalled saying. “And they don’t.”

The start of the Super Bowl suggested otherwise. The 49ers swarmed Mahomes and moved the ball at will, succumbing only to their own miscues. At the end of the first quarter, the 49ers had outgained the Chiefs, 125 yards to 16. San Francisco took a 10-0 lead in the second quarter, but the 49ers knew their advantage would not be safe. Early in the fourth quarter while trailing, 13-10, Coach Kyle Shanahan went for it on fourth and three at the Chiefs’ 15-yard line “100 percent” because of Mahomes, he said. Even though the 49ers had held Kansas City to 13 points through three quarters, Shanahan expected the Chiefs’ quarterback would start scoring. His call led to a touchdown, which put the 49ers back ahead, 16-13.

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The 49ers almost kept Mahomes off the field when it mattered most. Coming out of the two-minute warning in the fourth quarter, San Francisco faced third and five at the Kansas City 35. A first down would have enabled the 49ers to drain the clock and the Chiefs’ timeouts before a potentially game-winning field goal. But Spagnuolo, a wizard all year, summoned one of his best calls: He blitzed both cornerbacks, and Trent McDuffie leaped and tipped Brock Purdy’s pass.

“We’re here because of Coach Spags, man,” Chiefs safety Justin Reid said. “Coach Spags did all of this. From the beginning to the end, guys bought into his system, his game plan.”

Facing a defense tired from chasing him all day, Mahomes launched a methodical drive with 1:53 remaining in the fourth quarter. The Chiefs faced third and seven from the San Francisco 33, inside kicker Harrison Butker’s range but far from easy. They turned to a staple: three vertical routes by wide receivers with Kelce running a shallow cross, a route the Chiefs call “dagger.” Kelce dusted linebacker Fred Warner, caught a short pass and rumbled for 22 yards.

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“Beat him up man to man,” Nagy said. “That’s our guy. We’ll take that all day long.”

The Chiefs ran out of time, settling for a chip-shot field goal that forced overtime. When the 49ers won the coin toss, Shanahan chose to receive, a decision that will receive scrutiny as observers wrap their minds around new overtime rules that guarantee each team a possession. The 49ers drove into Chiefs territory, at which point Mahomes turned into an inspiration for his defense.

“Whatever we do, we can’t let them score,” Jones told his teammates. “If we can keep them to three, this game is won.”

Spagnuolo’s schemes again thwarted Shanahan, and Mahomes began another forever drive. The first three plays gained nine yards, setting the most pivotal moment of the game. After conferring on the sideline, the Chiefs decided to run a zone read. Mahomes would read the right defensive end. If he crashed down the line of scrimmage when Mahomes motioned to hand off to Isiah Pacheco, then the quarterback would keep the ball and roll right. At that point, he could flip a pass to Kelce running across the formation in front of him — or run the ball himself.

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Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes

As the Chiefs walked to the line, Mahomes told rookie wideout Rashee Rice to line up “open,” nudging him closer to the sideline to create more space and a better angle for Rice’s block. Kelce went slowly in motion to the left, not quite to the end of the offensive line, then cut back right at the snap. When Mahomes faked to Pacheco, Nick Bosa pursued him.

Mahomes pulled the ball and rolled right. Safety Logan Ryan stuck with Kelce, and he ran toward the right flat. Mahomes planted his leg, burst through a seam and slid down after an eight-yard gain. The Chiefs were alive.

“When you put the ball in [Mahomes’s] hands and he has different options, it’s tough,” Nagy said. “If you’re in the Super Bowl, you’re trying to win a Super Bowl, you want to put it in his hands.”

Mahomes again kept the drive moving on third and six, hitting Rice with the same play he had scored a touchdown on in the regular season at Allegiant Stadium against the Raiders. On third and one at the 49ers’ 32-yard line, Mahomes dropped, saw an opening in front of him and squeezed through the line into open grass for a 19-yard gain. Two plays later, the Chiefs had first and goal from the 3.

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“When we got down there, being honest, it felt pretty good,” Nagy said. “With four downs, you know you’re going to score a touchdown.”

The Chiefs called “Tom and Jerry,” a version of the play they used to score the game-tying touchdown in last year’s Super Bowl against the Eagles. Mecole Hardman sprinted in motion from wide right, then stopped at the snap and sprinted into the flat back to the left. When Hardman saw cornerback Charvarius Ward back up, he knew he would catch the touchdown that would win the Super Bowl. He danced into an empty path of turf. Mahomes flipped him the easiest of the 34 passes he completed all night.

“Caught the football, and I blacked out,” Hardman said.

The Chiefs have won Super Bowls with such frequency that Hunt has developed a routine. He gathers his family on the platform and takes a photo with the Lombardi Trophy. He will never forget handing his mother, Norma Hunt, the matriarch of the family, the trophy in Miami five years ago. Norma died in June at 85.

“Doing it this year without my mother, that was tough,” Hunt said. “I’ll probably remember she wasn’t here with us, but I know she was upstairs with my dad looking down on us.”

Onstage in the middle of the field, Mahomes echoed Kelce’s speech from the team meeting, telling the world “the Chiefs are never underdogs.” He walked through a wall of cigar smoke into the locker room after conducting a news conference. He sat at his locker, took a pull off a Coors Light and posed for pictures with Gabbert and the Chiefs’ offensive staff. Paul Rudd stood in a corner and filmed Chiefs players singing “We Are The Champions” and spraying one another with champagne.

In the other locker room, silence pervaded. The 49ers twice have been victims of Mahomes, twice lost 10-point leads to him. They face the same challenge as the rest of the NFL: Reaching the league’s apex means toppling Mahomes.

“You’ve got to feel this,” Shanahan said. “It’s not something that just words or anything makes it feel better. You sit there, and you deal with it.”

As Sunday night became Monday at the Luxor casino, a man wearing a No. 23 Christian McCaffrey jersey spotted a black $100 chip under a slot machine. He picked up the treasure and examined it. Someone congratulated him. He smiled, perhaps for the first time since red and yellow — not 49ers gold — fell. “I’m drunk,” he said.

A few miles away, just off the Strip, the Chiefs partied on the sixth floor of the Resorts World hotel. They had come to Vegas and won, and now they could enjoy the city’s spoils.

The celebration would last only so long. Mahomes has taken to heart something Brady once told him: Once the parties and parades end, the championship ends. In the locker room, amid the thumping music and puffs on cigars, Mahomes ran into actor Eric Stonestreet. The two hugged, and Mahomes made a vow: “We’re not done.”

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