It has been a different postseason run than usual for Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs as they get prepared win back to back Super Bowls on Feb. 11. in Las Vegas Nevada against the San Francisco 49ers. This time around, the Chiefs have been labeled as “underdogs” due to an up and down season of offensive woes, but they have embraced and surprised people in the playoffs.

Before this season, Mahomes has never started a playoff game on the road besides Super Bowl appearances in the past, but it did not matter as he went into the home field of the Buffalo Bills and Baltimore Ravens and beat both of them. There is no doubt the Chiefs are playing with a different mindset this time around as Mahomes said to the media Wednesday being in the “underdog” role has “lit fire” under himself and his teammates according to Myles Simmons of NBC Sports' Pro Football Talk.

“We just haven’t had that aspect, so it kind of lit fire under some guys, including myself,” Mahomes said. “At the end of the day, it’s playoff games, you want to win. This is what you play for, and I think that fire would have been — regardless of if we were an underdog or not, that fire would have been lit because this is the time of year that you work for and you put in those hard practices for.”

Mahomes: “I would have never dreamt” of making this many Super Bowls

Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes with fire in his eyes next to a Chiefs logo at Arrowhead Stadium

The underdog story is not finished yet as they now have to take on a 49ers team that is exceptional from top to bottom. These teams have some history as they met in the Super Bowl in 2020 where Kansas City was on top which ended up being Mahomes' first world championship.

“I think we have that mindset that if we’re going to practice the way we do, we’re going to work the way we work, we’re not going to let it slide by, we’re going to make sure we maximize our opportunity every time we’re out there,” Mahomes continued.

Since 2019, Mahomes has at least played in every Super Bowl besides one in 2021 where the Chiefs were beaten in the AFC Championship game by the Cincinnati Bengals. However, he already has two Super Bowls to his name and could add another one to his already Hall of Fame resume.

“It is really cool to play in this many Super Bowls in this short amount of time. I never would have dreamt of it, honestly. It’s cool, but we still want to go out there and win it. We don’t want to go out there and make it a bad memory. We want to make it a good one,” Patrick Mahomes said.

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Rob Gronkowski gives explanation to Chiefs playoff success this season

For some people, they were ready to write off the Chiefs during the regular season due to their off-kilter efficiency, but there is no doubt they turned up a notch. While there are some that are trying to figure out how this is possible, former player Rob Gronkowski said on the “Up & Adams” show that there is a chance they got “bored” since they always win Championship games so they turned “it up a notch” in the postseason.

“Yes he (Travis Kelce) is he absolutely turned it up a notch, making absolutely unbelievable catches and Patrick Mahomes put it in the spots where only Travis Kelce can make the catches, and that's what he's doing, that's why they are going to the Super Bowl as well,” Rob Gronkowski said on Up & Adams. “I would say, I was talking yesterday, I mean we were joking around but I think it was kind of some seriousness as well is that the Kansas City Chiefs, they're always playing in Championship games, so when you have regular season games throughout the whole year, you can get bored. Maybe the excitement wasn't there, so they weren't playing up to par. So now it's win or lose and then you go home. So now they have to dial it in, put the launch codes in, and they came out on fire in the playoffs.”

In any case, the Chiefs' road to glory is not over yet as they will face the 49ers in the Super Bowl. For Mahomes personally, he's on the hunt for his third piece of hardware, his latest coming last season against the Philadelphia Eagles.