Patrick Mahomes, Kansas City Chiefs and not one mention of Travis Kelce or Taylor Swift

The true test of greatness in American Football is a quarterback’s ability to lead a touchdown drive to win a Super Bowl.

Even in his boundary-busting career that includes two regular-season MVP awards and two Super Bowl wins by the age of 27, Mahomes had not managed that.

Last year, to defeat the Philadelphia Eagles in an offensive slugfest in Super Bowl 57 in Arizona, he led a drive to win the game that only required a field goal as time expired and was reliant on a contentious holding call against Eagles cornerback James Bradberry.

But in Sin City on Sunday night, approaching 3.50am here in the UK, Mahomes finally ticked off the quarterback’s litmus test by leading the Chiefs on a game-winning touchdown drive to eclipse San Francisco 25-22 in only the second Super Bowl to go into overtime.

It was one of the most dramatic conclusions in the history of America’s great sporting showpiece, befitting the stage but not what had gone before, with neither the Chiefs nor the 49ers able to generate much consistent offence against two stifling defences.

But when it mattered most, with the Chiefs trailing 10-3 at the half and 19-16 with one minute, 53 seconds left on the clock, Mahomes delivered. First he led his team downfield to give kicker Harrison Butker a chance at a 29-yard field goal with just six seconds left, which he converted, sending the game to overtime. Then, after Brock Purdy – selected 262nd and last in the 2022 college draft, therefore earning the nickname of Mr Irrelevant that goes with that usual ignominy – failed to orchestrate a touchdown drive for the 49ers in the first possession of overtime, stalling against the Steve Spagnuolo’s blitzing Chiefs defence to force a chip-shot field goal for Jake Moody, Mahomes got the ball back in his hands.

Twice he kept the game alive with fourth-down conversions when if the 49ers had have got a stop they would have won the Super Bowl for the sixth time in franchise history. And then he found Mecole Hardman with a three-yard touchdown pass to seal even Mahomes’ greatest ever win.

The victory means the Chiefs become the first team to win back-to-back Super Bowls since Tom Brady’s New England Patriots 19 years ago. Unsurprisingly, Mahomes – for whom nothing now seems impossible – is already looking towards next year and trying to accomplish something that has never been done before in the NFL: the three-peat.

“I think Tom (Brady) said it best, once you win that championship and you have those parades and you get those rings, you’re not the champ anymore,” said Mahomes.

And he also paid tribute to head coach Andy Reid, who had always been one of the great offensive minds of the NFL without the Super Bowl rings to prove it. An off-the-cuff playmaker of Mahomes’ ability, who is now developing into a great game-manager in situations like the one he found himself in on Sunday, was all he needed to master the biggest stage.

“He’s the best coach of all time," enthused Mahomes. “He brings out the best in me because he lets me be me. I don’t think I would be the quarterback that I am if I didn’t have coach Reid being my head coach.”

For the 49ers – one of the best-loved franchises here in the UK dating back to their own era of dominance which coincided with the first televised games in the 1980s – this was a second Super Bowl defeat to the Chiefs in five years.

This one will hurt more though for their failure to build a bigger lead in the first half. Their coach, Kyle Shanahan, said: “That was the toughest defence we have been against. We had our chances.”

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