The Chiefs are Super Bowl champions. Here’s how it all came together in glory
On a Monday morning last February, Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes fired off a text message from his phone. One night earlier — heck, just hours earlier — he had watched the Super Bowl, and he’s never enjoyed watching football less.
So his longtime trainer received the text.
I want to start working out now.
They would build the framework of an offseason plan that day, even providing a one-word name for it: Resiliency.
Mahomes was nothing if not resilient on the game’s biggest stage. The culmination of an offseason — for player and team — bore results Sunday.
The Chiefs prevailed in Super Bowl LIV in Miami, a 31-20 win against the 49ers supplying their first NFL championship in 50 years.
In one of his most frustrating nights as an NFL quarterback, Mahomes still willed his team back from a 10-point deficit in the fourth quarter with a pair of touchdown passes. Still finished with 286 yards.
These are the 365 days that led them here. The moves. The firings. The hirings.
But first, that journey starts with the best quarterback in franchise history watching the previous Super Bowl. Mahomes had thrown for 50 touchdowns and 5,000 yards over the last few months. Broken the home playoff drought. Become the youngest NFL MVP in 35 years.
But the Chiefs had fallen a coin toss or offsides flag or defensive stop shy of reaching the Super Bowl.
“Anytime you lose and you’re that close,” he said, “you don’t feel good. I’m going to use those experiences to go out there and find a way to keep playing.”
What came Sunday was 50 years in the making for a franchise but just two for its growing celebrity of a starting quarterback, the player told of a 50-year championship drought only to laugh in its face. In his hometown of Tyler, Texas, they’ve come to know him for his unflappable nature, his ability to take a moment in his life, however significant, and move on.
He moved on. Came back from three of the worst quarters of his career to provide one of his best.
Mahomes is just 24, only in his second year as a starter. Forget Mahomes. His father, Patrick Mahomes Sr., was not yet even born the last time the Chiefs raised the Vince Lombardi Trophy. Reporters covered that game with typewriters. The internet did not yet exist as a public offering.
This franchise navigated 23 seasons without a postseason victory in that tenure, the playoff agony too cruel to a fan base that just kept coming back anyway. The Chiefs lost a game without punting, lost another despite not allowing a touchdown, lost another despite holding a 28-point lead. They went 25 years without a postseason win inside Arrowhead Stadium.
The 2019 team absorbed that history. They were greeted with only cautious optimism because of that history.
But now all of its gone, at long last, and looking back, perhaps it makes the moment all that much sweeter. How could it not?
Even this team provided reminders of its snake-bitten predecessors. Mahomes dislocated his kneecap in Week 7, costing him two weeks, a timeline embraced with A sigh of relief compared to the fear of the instant in which it popped out of place and moved into his thigh. In another game, the Chiefs were missing seven starters. They lost in Mahomes’ return in Tennessee, dropping them to 6-4, running back Damien Williams crying in the locker room a lasting image.
But they wouldn’t lose again.
The championship has been 50 years in the making, but the process in its most recent version started in those immediate days after players cleaned out lockers. The furthest Kansas City had advanced in 25 years prompted little contentment and instead a sense of urgency to complement the star quarterback with a defense capable of holding up its end of the deal. The Chiefs fired defensive coordinator Bob Sutton 48 hours after the Patriots mowed down the field without resistance in overtime. They brought in Steve Spagnuolo, a replacement who had spent the previous year out of football, visiting NFL Films headquarters to address his perceived blind spots.
In a plan architected by general manager Brett Veach, the roster changed five defensive starters — Dee Ford, the man who lined up offsides in that AFC Championship Game, was traded to San Francisco; Justin Houston, Allen Bailey, Eric Berry and Steven Nelson were permitted to walk.
Almost immediately, Veach targeted two acquisitions — Frank Clark and Tyrann Mathieu, the former a defensive end to fit the new 4-3 scheme and the latter a versatile playmaking safety and coach’s voice on the field.
“Those are the two guys we wanted,” Veach said. “After that, everything fell into place. I think that’s one of those deals where if you can land the first two guys, everything else will fall in line.”
The process required time. It survived doubt. It endured a learning curve.
The Chiefs allowed only 11.5 points per game over their six-game winning streak to close out the regular season. They waited on the anticipated contributions from carryovers, free agents, draft picks and plug-and-play midseason acquisitions like Mike Pennel and Terrell Suggs.
And then you had Mahomes.
The centerpiece.
His first 31 pass attempts went for only 181 yards Sunday. His next 10 went for 105 and a pair of fourth-quarter touchdowns.
He makes the possibility of this trip a regularity, not a bi-century contribution.
Think about this: Weeks ago, he called to reserve a condo in Fort Worth.
The site of his trainer’s gym.
This story was originally published February 2, 2020 at 9:33 PM.