A Patrick Mahomes story and the Chiefs vying for NFL’s first repeat champs in 16 years
Patrick Mahomes became familiar with his media obligations earlier than most. He still remembers being a young kid and watching his father, a former MLB pitcher, partake in interviews.
In high school, the interaction turned first-hand. As a two-sport Division I talent, Mahomes had plenty of requests. He knew the drill.
But in his first season with the Chiefs, he made a mistake.
A slip.
He arrived in a town absent a Super Bowl championship for nearly a half-century ... and promptly started talking about building a dynasty there.
“They were kind of shook about that,” Mahomes said, sharing the story last week, more than three years later.
And then, with one Super Bowl trophy now on the resume, Mahomes smiled as he finished the anecdote.
“But I’m trying to prove them wrong still,” he said. “So maybe if we get a couple more Super Bowls, it will be like I was predicting the future.”
OK, so maybe it wasn’t a slip. In reflection, maybe it was an honest moment, Mahomes admitting he considered a dynasty before he’d even won once.
He’s not alone, either. Before last season’s Super Bowl championship lifted the weight from a franchise — heck, a city — so starved for a title, those involved were already planning for another. Even talking about it. In visible ways, such as Chris Jones standing in front of a locker and all but guaranteeing there would be more than one, like a scene from LeBron James’s move to South Beach. And in ways less visible, like a front office making its decisions with an objective not to narrow this window.
The Chiefs have planned for the Super Bowl trophies to stack together, all the while realizing they’re riding against history. They NFL has not had a repeat champion in 16 years. Heck, among the last 15, only two have even reached the championship game the following year.
To find different fate than their 15 most immediate predecessors, the Chiefs had to operate differently. To think differently.
They knew some teams were unable to hold together the roster that broke through the first time, and so players and general manager Brett Veach and his staff collectively found a way to keep this group together. Players took less money in some cases. The front office got creative in others.
They heard teams acknowledge they’d lost that edge — that proverbial hunger — after winning, and so the Chiefs openly talked about it throughout training camp. Andy Reid hoped emphasizing the finer details would keep focus. And certain players, including Mahomes, brought it every day.
“He’s a competitive prick,” you might recall Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy saying of Mahomes, a reference to his personality in practices.
Every team that wins a championship talks of winning another. It’s the natural progression of the story.
The Chiefs believe they can actually follow through on it. And there’s one more element at play here that bolsters their claim as they embark on the postseason Sunday. One more difference, so to speak.
What they encountered this season was unlike anything they’ve encountered before.
The ultimate preparation for another Super Bowl run
On a Sunday in November, the Panthers visited Arrowhead Stadium and played a football game in a manner atypical to any they’d played all season. They faked a punt. They were aggressive on fourth down.
According to a rankings model by EdjSports, Panthers coach Matt Rhule was the second-most conservative coach on fourth down in the NFL this season.
Not on that day. He went for it three times. The Panthers got all three, too.
The Chiefs prevailed that day — barely, 33-31 — and the message resonated.
Teams were going to treat them differently. They were going to play with nothing to lose. They were going to exhaust the playbook.
“You kind of got used to it as the season went on,” Mahomes said. “You just started seeing different coverages. Their offense would run trick plays and stuff like that. You just knew you were getting different things than what that defense (or) what the team usually did.”
This is where the Chiefs believe one advantage rests. This is the essence of the playoffs. The games are faster. They require you to prepare for the unexpected. It’s not all going to derive from film study.
The Chiefs absorbed that throughout this season. More so than last year, they say. Even in Week 16, an Atlanta team that had been eliminated from playoff contention disguised pressures in a method they had not showed on film in 15 weeks.
They Chiefs won anyway. They won 14 of 15 games in which Mahomes started.
While the postseason will certainly determine whether this team is actually built for a repeat, the Chiefs are proceeding as if the evidence is already there.
“The other part I like about this team, which I think is most important, especially now, is that they stayed humble with it,” Reid said. “It wasn’t something that they counted on or beat their chest that they were the Super Bowl champs. That’s not what they did.
“They know it’s a tough road to get where we want to go. And now in the playoffs, you’re going to get everybody’s best shot anyway. That’s the way it goes. So you have to bear down and get yourself mentally and physically prepared for three games, and one in particular, because it’s single elimination.”
The Chiefs won eight games this season by six points or fewer, including seven straight. They set an NFL record in doing so.
There are two ways of looking at that, of course. Did they relax too often against inferior competition? Or did they avoid upsets to which others succumbed, always finding a way to win late?
The Chiefs have been unable to articulate the exact answer, but they see an alternative anyway.
It’s about the preparation.
Nothing came easy last playoffs, either. Down 24 to Houston. Down to 10 to Tennessee. Down 10 in the fourth quarter to San Francisco.
What better way to prepare?
“If you look at our season, there were several games we could’ve lost the handle on and lost with the way the game was going,” Mahomes said. “I think guys found a way to win games. I think that’s going to be very important for us going into the playoffs. We’ve been in a lot of these tough-fought games.”
This story was originally published January 15, 2021 at 5:00 AM.