MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — The Chiefs defensive players listened to the chatter for two weeks. They heard how great the 49ers defense was. They heard how great their counterparts on the Kansas City offense were.

Not many people mentioned their defense. But in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl 2020, the Chiefs defense came up with three critical stops that enabled Patrick Mahomes to engineer a comeback and give Kansas City its first Super Bowl title in 50 years.

“Tonight we’re the best defense in the world,” Chiefs defensive end Frank Clark said.

For a while, it did not look like that. The 49ers scored 10 points in the third quarter to take a 20-10 lead and San Francisco quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo was having his way. But the Chiefs buckled down. Afterwards, the Chiefs said they never lost belief.

This is a team that trailed the Texans 24-0 in the divisional round of the playoffs and fell behind by 10 points in the AFC Championship game. Comebacks are its specialty.

“I told coach [Andy] Reid we’re not leaving this place without a ring,” defensive tackle Chris Jones said. “I’m not getting back on that bus unless we have a ring. There was no doubt in my mind we were going to win it. We were down 10, the game got a little shifty, up and down. There was no doubt in my mind. We’ve got MVP on the other side of the ball. We’ve got the fastest, the best receiving corps in the league. Our defense, sack nation baby. They’re going to make a movie about this.”

The first defensive stop came after Mahomes’ second interception of the game. San Francisco took over at its own 20 with 11:57 to go and leading by 10. The Chiefs forced a punt with 9:01 left. Mahomes led the Chiefs down the field for a touchdown that cut the score to 20-17.

The 49ers got the ball back at their own 20 and the Chiefs played their best defense of the night, forcing a three-and-out after two Garoppolo incompletions.

“I felt like in that last quarter we knew it was getting tight, and defensively, in order to win this game, we knew we were going to have to step up and make some plays,” safety Tyrann Mathieu said. “And I thought we were able to do that.”

Mahomes got the ball back and drove the Chiefs 65 yards on seven plays and threw a touchdown pass to Damien Williams to go up 24-20. The 49ers took over with 2:39 left at their own 15. It was on the Chiefs defense to hold the lead.

“We knew it was over,” cornerback Bashaud Breeland said. “Once they put it on us, we wanted that game to be on us. We wanted to close it out for our offense. Everybody knows this is an offensive team. Everybody sees it as an offensive team. We wanted to come out here and show we can play defense, too.”

They shut the 49ers down, ending the series with a fourth-down sack from Clark. The Chiefs scored again and then the Chiefs had one more defensive series, intercepting Garoppolo for the second time.

“It wasn’t pretty,” defensive coordinator Steve Spagnulo said, “but it was gritty.”