Mahomes was exposed alright. By his offensive line....
Did he have his best game? Obviously not but again it's hard to when you are pressured on 75% of your dropbacks.
The outcome of the game isn't surprising really because we have this scenario play out so often before. Offensive juggernaut team that has relatively simple and expected run through playoffs vs the team that had to win on the road through adversity and did so through a defense that (real or perceived) "found it's identity" during that run. Ironically the most famous example of this involved Tom Brady on the other side of the ledger when the Giants of 07 had to go through the wildcard and 3 away playoff games to face the seemingly impossible to stop Patriots and the exact same thing happened then as it did Sunday - the Giants front 4 bulldozed the Pats o-line and allowed so many guys in coverage of pressured passes that you wondered how it was possible that team hung like 40 points a game on people the entire season.
Back to Mahomes, look the media has to create these narratives of "the challenger for the GOAT" even though it's used flippantly (heard the same thing hilariously about Cam Newton who "redefining the position" - Mahomes is clearly way better than Newton but it shows how willing people are to jump to that narrative. Romo even made the comment that Mahomes will "play in so many more of these" - but even that is huge statement to make. We don't really know what happens when Kelce and Hill come of contract - is Mahomes Brady'esque in that he can essentially corral a revolving door of talent into being contenders almost every season? This is way harder than people give Brady credit for (why he's even next level of great to even Jordan who did it on a smaller scale for a shorter time span).
So was he really exposed? Naahhh not really - I'm more surprised that people were shocked by the outcome given that Mahomes is really still a kid, human and in a situation that just had the feeling like it wasn't going to go well for them (which it didn't).