Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence described feeling “sheer panic” as he hit the ground. After right guard Patrick Mekari stepped on his foot, Lawrence fell. Perhaps the panic is what kept his eyes sharp, allowing him to sprint as soon as he saw an opening. That moment changed everything.

“Not a bad birthday,” Lawrence wrote on Instagram, sharing a carousel of photos showing him celebrating the win on the field with his teammates. He turned 26 on game day, but before the celebrations, his focus was on the field. The QB made a few mistakes, but he also poured in immense effort to make things right. And it worked.

“Just how we drew it up!!!” Lawrence captioned his post, shouting out to his teammates. “Not a bad birthday — Let’s keep rolling!” Now, the fear was real when he stumbled not just once but twice.

Trevor Lawrence turned what looked like a disaster into one of the wildest moments of the night. After tripping and falling to the turf, he stumbled trying to get up before finally regaining his footing and scrambling his way into the end zone for a 1-yard touchdown with just 23 seconds left, sealing a 31-28 win over the Kansas City Chiefs on Monday night.

“What a crazy, crazy finish,” Lawrence said afterward, as teammates serenaded him in the locker room to celebrate his 26th birthday.

The Jaguars’ head coach, Liam Coen, called it a “goofy finish.” “It’s a goofy finish, but what a tough moment for him,” Coen said. “He wasn’t going to lose.” He commended the QB, who shocked his teammates by making a 1-yard touchdown with a little more than 20 seconds remaining on the clock. He wasn’t going to give up, especially after two costly turnovers.

After Lawrence’s last-minute heroics, Kansas City Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes had just 16 seconds to turn things around, but it wasn’t enough. The Chiefs had briefly seized the upper hand quite a few times. One was with a 14-0 lead thanks to Lawrence’s fumble on the goal line. The team had a 28-24 lead and over a minute left on the clock. But things shifted quickly.

Several penalties by the Chiefs gave the Jaguars the perfect opportunity to capitalize and seal the win. Jacksonville’s comeback got a major lift from linebacker Devin Lloyd, the AFC Defensive Player of the Month for September, who returned an interception 99 yards for a touchdown in the third quarter, the longest regular-season interception return by a linebacker in NFL history.

Lloyd jumped in front of Patrick Mahomes’ pass intended for JuJu Smith-Schuster at the goal line and sprinted the other way for his league-leading fifth takeaway. He slipped past Mahomes and Kareem Hunt, hit full stride down the Jaguars’ sideline, and got a key block from Josh Hines-Allen before securing the ball as Tyquan Thornton made a last-ditch attempt to jar it loose near the 5-yard line.

“It’s a big win,” Lawrence said. “Obviously it’s a good team. They’ve been a good team for a long time. They’re hard to beat, they really are. … At the end of the game, they’re always in it and they always seem to make the plays.” The team had help from the rookie Travis Hunter, who shone bright with a 44-yarder.  This helped the Jaguars’ 2nd TD.

On the other side, the Chiefs’ defensive tackle Chris Jones had a different opinion.

Chris Jones calls Trevor Lawrence’s winning TD a “fluke.”

The final play and Lawrence’s stunt drew particular attention to Jones. He appeared to slow down and watch Lawrence cross the goal line instead of aggressively pursuing him. While it’s uncertain whether Jones could have stopped the quarterback, many felt a closer effort might have altered the results.

Reflecting, he said, “I thought multiple times we had him.” Speaking of the stunt, Jones said, “We’ve just got to finish. Us, as a defensive line, we’ve got to be more disciplined on our rush lanes. We let Trevor get out multiple times, especially in the red zone. That’s on the D-line. We’ve got to be cognizant on our gaps. I take that personal, the containment of the quarterback.”

Talking about the last play by the Jaguars, “We’ve got to finish that play,” Jones said. “It was a fluke play for him to be able to break that many tackles. I put it on us as a defense. We’ve got to finish. We’ve got to bring him down right there.” Whether it was a fluke or not, the defense surely could have done better to stop Lawrence.

The veteran defensive tackle finished the game with one tackle in the loss. But the loss can’t be pinned solely on Jones. The Chiefs gave up 21 unanswered points during the game.

While Jones and the Chiefs will look to avoid mistakes, the Jaguars will hope to continue the momentum in Week 6.