KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Patrick Mahomes could read New York Giants linebacker Bobby Okereke’s mind.

“He’s about to pick that ball up and I could see his eyes get big, like he’s about to score a touchdown,” Mahomes said.

The Kansas City Chiefs had slogged their way to a 6-0 lead on Sunday Night Football at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, before Harrison Butker missed a field goal and Cam Skattebo electrified Giants fans with a game-tying touchdown run, so Mahomes hoped to lead a momentum-reclaiming drive.

Instead, he spiked a swing pass to Isiah Pacheco backwards — by about two yards.

Okereke raced toward the goal line, scooped up the live ball and headed in for the score against a Kansas City team that entered play 0-2 for the first time since Mahomes was a teenager at Texas Tech.

Worse yet, it wasn’t even the first time Mahomes had spiked a backwards pass at Pacheco’s feet in the quarter.

After the game, Mahomes said he couldn’t remember if he’d ever done that before in an NFL game and now he’d done it twice mere minutes apart.

The first time, officials whistled the play dead as an incomplete pass, but it was ruled a backward pass after review and turned into a 3-yard loss.

The Chiefs went on to score a field goal on that drive, but the second lateral/fumble/backward pass threatened to give the Giants a stunning lead late in the first half — or, at the very least, a turnover inside the Kansas City 5-yard line.

Then, Mahomes made tackling magic?

“I will say it was a great tackle,” he said. “I was proud of myself. That was a big-time tackle, but I’m not going to try to do that again. We’ll throw the ball forward from now on.”

Mahomes recognized his gaffe right away, hustled after the ball and knocked it free from Okereke’s grasp then recovered the linebacker’s fumble to prevent utter disaster.

“It seems like every week he’ll do something like that and the guys know that he’s all-in,” Chiefs coach Andy Reid said. “It’s not like he’s just throwing the ball back there. He’s going to do whatever it takes to come out on top in the game.”

Mahomes could laugh about it since Kansas City ultimately prevailed 22-9.

“You’ve got to finish in this game,” Mahomes said. “You’ve to compete, you’ve got to love the game and, whenever you make a mistake, you’ve got to still leave it all on the line. … “It was a huge play, but it was fixing my own mistake. It’s hard to take credit for it because you are the reason that it happened.”

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