PHOENIX — Following a season in which he threw for a league-leading 5,250 yards and 41 touchdowns, Patrick Mahomes is expected by many to win his second career NFL MVP award. The Kansas City Chiefs quarterback first claimed the honor after the 2018 season, in which he threw for 5,097 yards and 50 TDs.

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So the status of his injured ankle has been a hot topic of conversation this week leading up to Super Bowl LVII, when his Chiefs will face the Philadelphia Eagles.

“You won’t know exactly how it is until you get to game day,” he said Wednesday during the Chiefs media session. “I mean, I definitely move around better than I was moving last week or two weeks ago. So it’s just trying to continue to get the treatment and the rehab and get it as close to 100% and then rely on some adrenaline to let me do a little bit extra when I’m on the field.”

He doesn’t expect to be limited on Sunday, though it might not matter much even if he is. Mahomes hurt his ankle Jan. 21 in the 27-20 divisional-round victory over Jacksonville, and was clearly hobbled in the AFC championship game against Cincinnati. But he still threw for 326 yards and two touchdowns in the 23-20 win.

After the game, Mahomes said God gave him the strength to play.

“I wanna thank God, man. He healed my body this week,” he told CBS’s Tracy Wolfson. “To battle through that, He gave me the strength to be out here.”

On Monday during Super Bowl Opening Night, Mahomes spoke more about his faith in God.

“My Christian faith plays a role in everything that I do,” he said (video via FSPN). “I always ask God to lead me in the right direction and let me be who I am for His name. So it has a role in everything that I do. Obviously we’ll be on that huge stage in the Super Bowl that He’s given me, and I want to make sure I’m glorifying Him while I do it.”

Chiefs team chaplain Marcellus Casey says Mahomes is a regular attendee at the team’s chapel services, and the 27-year-old says he’s recently enjoyed spiritual growth.

“I feel like I’ve grown in my faith these last few years and I think that’s given me more sense of who I am and why I play the game,” he said, adding, “It just kind of relieves the pressure of playing a football game because I know that I’m on that football field to glorify Him before everything. So it’s not about winning or losing, it’s about going out there and being the best that I can in His name.”

Mahomes said that a passage in Acts 20 has impacted him recently, so much so that he got a tattoo about it. It’s the story Eutychus in Acts 20:7-12:

“On the first day of the week we came together to break bread. Paul spoke to the people and, because he intended to leave the next day, kept on talking until midnight. There were many lamps in the upstairs room where we were meeting. Seated in a window was a young man named Eutychus, who was sinking into a deep sleep as Paul talked on and on. When he was sound asleep, he fell to the ground from the third story and was picked up dead. Paul went down, threw himself on the young man and put his arms around him. ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ he said. ‘He’s alive! Then he went upstairs again and broke bread and ate. After talking until daylight, he left. The people took the young man home alive and were greatly comforted.”

“It’s about being half in and half out on God. That’s the interpretation I took from it, and how you can’t be half in and half out,” Mahomes said. “So that was the Bible verse that kind of stuck with me, that told me that I needed to be fully in.”

As he remains all in with God and aims to glorify Him while playing on the biggest stage, Mahomes will test his injured ankle on the State Farm Stadium grass starting at 6:30 p.m. ET Sunday. He’ll lead the league’s No. 1 offense in yards (413.6 per game) and points (29.2) against the Eagles’ top-ranked passing defense (179.8 yards allowed) and eighth-ranked scoring defense (20.2 points allowed).

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