BALTIMORE, Md. — The Kansas City Chiefs and the Super Bowl are getting back together.
For the fourth time in the last five years, future Hall of Famers Andy Reid, Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce will be competing for a championship on Feb. 12 in Super Bowl LVIII.
This time, Taylor Swift and her legion of fans are on board with the ride to face either the Lions or 49ers in Las Vegas.
Mahomes and Kelce connected 11 times for 106 yards and an early touchdown Sunday that set the tone for the Chiefs to play from ahead against the NFL’s best front-running team and beat the Ravens 17-10 in the AFC Championship Game in front of 71,439 at M&T Bank Stadium.
The Chiefs will be looking to cement a dynasty with a fourth Super Bowl win since 2019 after running out the final 2:34 with two first downs – one by penalty and one by Marquez Valdes-Scantling, whose 32-yard reception leading into the two-minute warning iced the game.
It also more than made up for his drop against the Eagles that came to epitomize the now-forgotten problems Chiefs’ receivers had this season.
The top-seeded Ravens dominated their way to being four-point favorites against the dynasty-minded Chiefs, with nine wins by at least 14 points against winning teams and a 6-0 record against opponents that were three games or more above .500 at kickoff.
Perhaps most impressively, the Ravens only trailed for 9.7 percent – less than 95 minutes total – of their first 17 meaningful games.
But Kelce’s 19-yard touchdown catch put the Chiefs in front 7-0 eight minutes into the first quarter.
In fact, the Chiefs scored touchdowns on their first two possessions, becoming the first Ravens’ opponent to do so this season.
The Ravens never led and will be haunted by fourth-quarter mistakes – some from rookie Zay Flowers and some from the likely second-time NFL MVP Lamar Jackson.
Jackson’s first pass of the third quarter was his first this season when facing a double-digit deficit.
The defining sequence of the game happened over a minute spanning the third and fourth quarters.
Flowers, who made a 30-yard touchdown catch in the first quarter, snuck behind the defense for 54-yard catch – it could’ve been a touchdown with a better throw by Jackson – but negated some of the damage with a 15-yard penalty for taunting cornerback L’Jarius Sneed.
Sneed got the last laugh when it turned out to be only the second-biggest mistake that Flowers made.
On the first play of the fourth quarter, Flowers tried to stretch the ball over the goal line with at the end of an 8-yard catch and Sneed punched it loose at the 1-yard line, allowing teammate Trent McDuffie to recover it in the end zone for a touchback.
The next offensive snap for the Ravens happened 98 yards away, at their own 1-yard line with 10:35 remaining.
Jackson quickly moved the Ravens to field-goal range but threw an ill-advised pass into triple coverage in the end zone that was intercepted by Deon Bush.
Game (all but) over, even after Justin Tucker converted a 29-yard field goal.
The Ravens brought out more than a half-dozen legends – none bigger than Ed Reed and Ray Lewis doing his signature introduction dance – to fire up the crowd on hand for the first AFC Championship Game held in Baltimore since January 1971.
The only problem? The Chiefs have legends still coaching and playing.
Mahomes completed 30 of 39 passes for 241 yards and a touchdown, Kelce had 116 yards receiving and the Steve Spagnuolo-coordinated defense held the NFL’s No. 1-ranked rushing attack to 81 yards.
Jackson completed 20-of-37 passes for 272 yards with a touchdown and an interception.
The second quarter made the difference for the Chiefs – even with some points left on the table.
Pacheco ran for a 2-yard touchdown and Harrison Butker kicked a 52-yard field goal to open up a 17-7 lead just before the half, but the Chiefs did not score after Jackson lost a fumble at his own 33-yard line.
Pacheco was stopped on a fourth-and-1 in what was the first of two second-quarter blunders for the offensive line.
Right guard Trey Smith’s back-to-back holding penalties took a touchdown out of the equation before Butker’s kick.
In a game between the two defenses with the most sacks in the NFL, the Ravens didn’t wrap up Mahomes over the first three quarters, while the Chiefs got two timely hits on Jackson.
The first was a strip-sack and the second turned a third-and-9 from the 41-yard into a punt when a short completion could’ve led to a field goal – one of many missed scoring opportunities for the Ravens.