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Patrick Mahomes is deservedly being praised as the best quarterback in football after the Chiefs won Super Bowl LIV. But Mahomes wasn’t the only quarterback who won games for the Chiefs this season.

Backup quarterback Matt Moore, who filled in for Mahomes and helped the Chiefs win two games during the regular season, deserves credit as well.

Moore was out of the NFL in 2018, and by all appearances his career was over. But when Chiefs backup quarterback Chad Henne was injured in the preseason, they called Moore, and he signed with Kansas City just before the start of the regular season.

The Chiefs hoped Moore would spend the entire season holding a clipboard, but when Mahomes got injured against the Broncos in the second quarter of Week 7, Moore filled in and played well, and the Chiefs won the game. Kansas City lost a hard-fought game against the Packers in Week Eight, and then Moore led the Chiefs to a victory over the Vikings in Week Nine.

If the Chiefs had lost to the Broncos and Vikings, their 12-4 record would have been 10-6, they wouldn’t have had a bye week, and having to play three AFC playoff games instead of two, with two of those three likely on the road, there’s a good chance they wouldn’t have gone to the Super Bowl. Moore deserves a lot of credit.

Some teams fall apart when they lose their starting quarterback. The Chiefs lost the reigning league MVP, replaced him with a guy who had been out of the league for a year, and won two out of three games. That’s a credit to Moore, Andy Reid, and a Chiefs team that wouldn’t let anything stop them from reaching the Super Bowl.