Patrick Mahomes was already slogging through the roughest regular season of his career, before the Las Vegas Raiders nearly ruined Christmas.

In the weeks preceding the December 25 matchup, frustration began mounting in Kansas City. Receivers kept dropping Mahomes’ passes. He had thrown a sideline tantrum against the Buffalo Bills, after an offsides call negated a late go-ahead touchdown. Mahomes was fined $50,000 for his outburst.

The world’s eyes had turned toward Kansas City. Chiefs games reached new viewership milestones, thanks in no small part to Taylor Swift’s budding romance with the team’s star tight end Travis Kelce. So every sport-tavern gadfly and Swiftie seemed to be wondering the same things: What was wrong with the Chiefs? Especially on the offensive side of the football, where Mahomes, the two-time NFL MVP, called the shots?

Christmas Day, which Mahomes calls the low point of the 2023 season, compounded all these problems. Mahomes yelled at his offensive linemen after a first quarter in which the team recorded minus-18 yards of total offense. Then he threw a pick 6. The dropped-ball habit continued in Las Vegas’ 20-14 victory at Arrowhead Stadium. Kansas City lost its fourth game in six weeks and forfeited all hope of clinching the top seed in the AFC. More likely than not, the Chiefs would have to win a road playoff game or two to make the Super Bowl. Mahomes had never even played on an opponent’s home turf in the postseason.

Way to set the mood for Christmas dinner.

Mahomes and his wife, Brittany, still hosted family and friends. Their kids, daughter Sterling, 3, and son Bronze, 1, still opened presents. Mahomes forced a smile. But his focus, he admits, was elsewhere. “Santa definitely wasn’t as fun,” Mahomes tells TIME during a late-March interview in Dallas; he spends his offseasons in the area, having grown up near Tyler, Texas, about 100 miles to the east. “That game kind of turned my mind. Where I was like, ‘Hey, we’ve got to turn it around. Right now.’”

Mahomes and the Chiefs got to work. Kansas City rattled off six straight regular-season and playoff wins—including two on the road against top-notch AFC talents, the Bills and the Baltimore Ravens—en route to becoming the first team in nearly 20 years to win back-to-back Super Bowls. Kansas City has now won three NFL titles over the past five seasons. “We didn’t let other people’s outside noise affect us,” says Mahomes. “Even though we struggled throughout the season, we kept our minds in the right places. Whenever the lights got the brightest, guys showed up.”

 

 
TIME 100 Patrick Mahomes Cover
 

Especially Mahomes. He won his third Super Bowl MVP award, joining Tom Brady  and Joe Montana (3) as the only players in NFL history to win that many. He’s now entrenched in the Greatest of All Time (GOAT) conversation. Brady won his third Super Bowl MVP when he was 37 years old. Montana was 33. Mahomes is just 28. “I’ve had at least one of the top three starts to a career,” says Mahomes. “I’ll put it that way.” He mentions Brady and Montana alongside him and throws in a sort of honorable mention for Dan Marino, who never won a Super Bowl but put up eye-popping passing statistics.