Patrick Mahomes knew he could run on the ankle he sprained last week. The bigger concern for the Chiefs quarterback was how he would stop.

The solution against Houston was simple: Mahomes didn’t stop.

The two-time MVP kept chugging forward until he plowed into the end zone on a 15-yard scramble to cap the Chiefs’ opening drive Saturday. Mahomes proceeded to throw for 260 yards and another score, never once looking troubled by his ailing ankle, and led Kansas City to a 27-19 victory that put the Chiefs on the brink of the No. 1 seed in the AFC playoffs.

The Chiefs (14-1) can clinch the postseason bye and home-field advantage if Buffalo loses to or ties New England today. If the Bills win, Kansas City can wrap it up by beating Pittsburgh on Christmas Day — its third game in an 11-day span.

“I ask a lot from the guys around me. I feel like if I’m going to ask them to play through pain and nicks and bruises, I’ve got to do it as well,” Mahomes said.

Xavier Worthy had seven catches for 65 yards and a touchdown, Kareem Hunt ran for 55 yards and another score, and Marquise Brown had five catches for 45 yards for Kansas City in his first game this season after recovering from a shoulder injury.

The result was what Chiefs coach Andy Reid called his team’s most comprehensive performance of the season.

C.J. Stroud threw for 244 yards and two touchdowns with two interceptions for Houston (9-6). Tank Dell, who had six catches for 98 yards, sustained a devastating knee injury and was taken the hospital.

Ravens 34, Steelers 17 >> Lamar Jackson was solid in Baltimore’s biggest game of the season so far.

Then, after one of the star quarterback’s rare slip-ups, one of his teammates delivered the play of the day.

Jackson threw three touchdown passes and Marlon Humphrey scored on a fourth-quarter interception return to help the Ravens pull even with Pittsburgh atop the AFC North with the victory over the Steelers.

Pittsburgh (10-5) would have clinched the division with a victory, but now the teams are deadlocked after the Ravens (10-5) won for just the second time in the last 10 games in this series. Baltimore clinched a playoff berth. The Steelers had already done so.

“It was cool to get a pick-6, but clinching a spot in the playoffs, to beat the Steelers,” Humphrey said.

Russell Wilson threw two touchdown passes, the second of which tied the game at 17 with 5:14 left in the third quarter. Jackson answered with a 7-yard scoring strike to Mark Andrews, and after Pittsburgh turned the ball over on downs, a 44-yard run by Derrick Henry put the Ravens in the red zone.

That drive came to nothing when Jackson was intercepted for just the fourth time this season, but then Humphrey — who was celebrating the recent birth of his son Duke — picked off Wilson and went 37 yards to the end zone to give Baltimore a cushion in a series that’s been razor-thin of late. The previous nine games between the Steelers and Ravens were decided by seven points or fewer.

“My whole family’s in town to help out with my wife and everything,” Humphrey said. “I was texting her before. I’m supposed to go pick her up from the hospital, discharge her with the baby. So there’s a lot of just great things that happened this week.”