Mellinger Minutes: Chiefs are (finally) on clock for Super Bowl after exciting season
There will be more time to get further into the details once the season is over but with a first-round bye we can pause for a few paragraphs here to say something out loud:
No matter how this Chiefs postseason ends, they are in really good position for the future.
The obvious is, well, obvious: their presumptive MVP quarterback is 23, their star receiver 24, their star tight end 29. The oldest starting offensive lineman is 29. Their best defensive player is 24, and assuming they franchise tag Dee Ford the most consequential unrestricted free agents are Mitch Morse, Steven Nelson, and Allen Bailey.
They have an extra second-round pick next year, with $43 million in projected salary cap space according to Over The Cap plus some potential flexibility with the contracts of Justin Houston and Eric Fisher. Their front office is led by a young GM who has shown himself to be aggressive and adept at adding depth.
The NFL moves fast. Before Super Bowl XLV, after the 2010 season, there was talk throughout the league that the Packers were the NFL’s next great dynasty. They were young and ascending, led by a 27-year-old franchise quarterback.
And the Packers won that year! Beat the Steelers. They even went 15-1 the next year — the one loss was in Kansas City, essentially giving then-interim coach Romeo Crennel the real job — but lost their first playoff game and haven’t been back to a Super Bowl since.
So, there are no guarantees.
But, this is real. The Chiefs are not a straw house. This is a real thing they’re building. They could be on the cusp of something special. Maybe this month, maybe in the future.
This week’s reading recommendation is Greg Bishop on Tua Tagovailoa, and the eating recommendation is the chicken shawarmah at Aladdin Cafe.
Please give me a follow on Twitter and Facebook, and as always, thanks for your help and thanks for reading.
Jeremy is a Chiefs fan!
We went through some of this in the game column, which I hope you read and are so move by that you send me $50 because I have kids to feed, but this one’s different.
I know we all want to say Same Ol’ Chiefs, but these are facts:
- The Chiefs have not had the AFC’s top seed in more than 20 years.
- The Chiefs have not had the AFC’s best quarterback since Len Dawson, at least.
- The Chiefs will likely be the betting favorite until and unless they play in the Super Bowl.
That’s a pretty good place to start. We can play this game if you want. The defense stinks. Eric Berry didn’t play against the Raiders. Damien Williams has been really good, but getting zero points from first and goal from the 4 doesn’t establish confidence in this team getting the tough yards. On and on we can go.
But the NFL does not allow boats without holes, sometimes it’s worth thinking about from the other side. If you root for one of the AFC’s other flawed teams, does having to beat Patrick Mahomes at Arrowhead Stadium sound like a spa day?
Look, if you rooted for the Chiefs before Mahomes arrived, this is the time of year the team stomps on your heart (if it hasn’t already). And it is SOOOO easy to see how that could happen again: Mahomes makes a mistake, maybe two, and the defense can’t swim against the current. If you aren’t guarding your heart at least a little, you might be a sociopath.
But sports are designed to break your heart. That’s a truth that people don’t like to talk about. Fans of 31 teams are frustrated with the end of their season, and the one lucky group is happy for like a week and then starts worrying about the next one. We tend to get a little parochial around here, and Kansas City has had more than it’s share of disappointment, but we’re not alone.
And it’s not hyperbole to say that Mahomes playing for your team is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. This is the ground floor of something that Kansas Citians will talk about for 50 years, the same way we still talk about Len Dawson. He changes the calculus. Changes what’s possible.
Every Chiefs team that’s broken your heart had self-imposed limits. They could have made Super Bowls. Should have made at least two or three. But it was always hard for those teams in a way that is no longer true. Those teams couldn’t convert 2nd and 30 in Denver, or 4th and 9 against the Ravens.
So, if the Chiefs’ established brand of playoff failure doesn’t give you at least a little hesitation, you’re probably not thinking straight.
But if Mahomes’ supernatural talent and the fact that even one more disappointment will be followed by 15 years or so of him as your quarterback doesn’t give you a fresh hope, then I’m not sure sports are for you.
This is a good question!
Depending on how far away you want to get from it, this season has already been a success. The next 15 years or so of this organization were always going to revolve around Mahomes and no matter how optimistic some of us were about him there was a real chance he was going to stink. That’s just a fact.
There was also a realistic chance he would be merely good — alternatively sensational and aggravating, like a gravelly voiced Matthew Stafford. Maybe some regression is coming, but realistically it looks like Mahomes is a generational quarterback.
That’s all been shown in a year, and the hope was that it would happen in a few years. So, no matter what, at least on that basic level this season is already a success.
Now, we also live in the real world so I think we’d all agree that a blown lead or loss in a game that features Andrew Luck scoring a touchdown on a fumble that bounces off a lineman’s helmet — ahem — in the division round would be a brutal disappointment.
We can also probably agree that making the Super Bowl would be a success for a team with a putrid defense and first-year starting quarterback.
So what we’re really talking about is what a loss in the AFC Championship would feel like. And I’m not sure how it wouldn’t include at least a lingering disappointment.
You’d be able to rationalize, after a certain point. It could be sort of like a milder version of the 2014 Royals — disappointed at the ending, but thrilled with the process.
But that would still be a loss at home, as (presumably) the betting favorite. It would be one more year where the Chiefs — MVP quarterback or not — again failed to play to their seed.
It would be a missed opportunity, with the Chiefs unable to take advantage of a weak AFC and an offense that may or may not ever be this good again.
It would not be 1997. But it would be a bummer.
So, the answer: make the Super Bowl.
He’s going to win MVP. The debate has given a lot of us #content to write, and conversations to have, but if you pause for a second you realize these haven’t really been debates.
I went on Tom Curran’s show in Boston last week to talk about this. He had Nick Underhill of the New Orleans Advocate on to give Brees’ case, and me to give Mahomes’. The first thing Tom said to me: Nick said you had the easier case to make.
This feels pretty universal. The first website I found with betting odds had Mahomes at -250, and Brees at +170. That means you’d need to bet $250 on Mahomes just to win $100, while you’d win $170 with a $100 bet on Brees.
This is going to happen. Ninety percent.
The Super Bowl path is a bit murkier. The Chiefs are 9/2 to make it, which makes them the betting favorite in the AFC but not by much: the Patriots are 6/1. The Ravens are 14/1 and the Chargers 16/1, but whoever wins that will rise to 8/1 or so.
I believe the Chiefs are the best team in the AFC. I believe this because of the offense, because they played the Patriots to the wire in Foxboro without Justin Houston and with Mahomes playing poorly for a half, because they beat the Ravens while missing two field goals, because they’ve led the Chargers for 7,196 of 7,200 seconds, and because they’re first among AFC teams in Pro Football Focus’ ratings and because they’re first overall in Football Outsiders’ DVOA.
But I also believe it’s fairly close, and that you don’t need a lot of imagination to see how the Ravens, Chargers, Colts or Patriots could beat them*.
* Hot take: the Texans have a 2013 Chiefs stench to them. They’ve beaten a lot of bad teams. They last beat a playoff team on Oct. 7. Their statistically excellent defense gave up 32 points to the Eagles two weeks ago, and they lost at home to the Colts on Dec. 9.
So, anyway, crude math here: if the conference semifinals present four teams with an equal chance of winning then everyone is at 25 percent.
I believe the Chiefs are the best in a fairly even field, and will have the (often overstated, but still) advantage of playing at home.
I put all of that into my proprietary calculator — pauses for effect — and congratulations, Chiefs, you are the proud owners of a 38.2421 chance of representing the AFC in the Super Bowl!
Yes, by far.
I’ll go one step more: this is the most entertaining regular season of any team that I’ve ever covered.
The 2014 Royals come close. That was a wild ride, with lows that felt too much and then finished with a high that felt impossible for so long. I do not know whether I’ll ever again cover a team where so many people — fans and media both — were openly and mockingly calling for the manager and GM to be fired and then just two months later pretending like that never happened while doing everything but wear blue facepaint to work.
And, sure, maybe this is recency bias. But Patrick Mahomes is the most entertaining Kansas City athlete since — dammit, I’m going to say it and I’m going to mean it — Bo Jackson.
This was a thrill ride, and even if he throws for 6,000 yards and 60 touchdowns next year it will never again be like this: fresh, unexpected, imagination-bending, this constant mind war between what you think is possible and what you’re actually seeing in front of you.
Mahomes could very well have a Hall of Fame career, but there are no guarantees he will ever again have two talents like Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce in their primes and healthy.
The no-look pass will never be new again. The next left-handed throw on a game winning drive won’t be the first. It won’t ever be like this again.
The 2016 season is a good call. That one was crazy — the biggest comeback in franchise history in the opener, Marcus Peters’ game-winning emasculation of Kelvin Benjamin in Carolina, the Sunday night overtime win in Denver where Colquitt thought the winning field goal missed, Eric Berry’s pick-two in Atlanta. That was a hell of a ride.
Old heads might go back to the 1990s, when defense was still exciting, or 2003 — the franchise breakthrough offensively.
There have been some really fun college seasons, too. Kansas and Missouri football in 2007. K-State football in 1998, or 2012. Mizzou basketball in 2012, Kansas in 2008, and K-State in 2019. And those are just the fairly recent years.
But Mahomes was the story of this NFL season, surrounded by elite skill position talent and an innovative coach and a defense bad enough to require his best.
I really don’t think this is being caught up in the moment. We may never see anything like this again. It’s OK to pause for a minute and enjoy that.
I’ve been thinking about this pretty much since the Jared Cook play clinched the AFC West and No. 1 seed.
We talked about this on the podcast, but there’s a compelling case to be made for each team to be the toughest opponent.
Baltimore runs the ball and has a boss defense. The Chargers beat the Chiefs at Arrowhead a few weeks ago. The Colts are one of the hottest teams in the league, with an excellent quarterback playing as well as ever.
But dangit, this is a place where we answer questions, so here goes.
The best path for the Chiefs is the Chargers in the division round, and Texans in the AFC Championship. I’m picking the Chargers because I don’t believe they can win twice in Arrowhead, and with a belief that the rematch would bring out the Chiefs’ best. And I’m picking the Texans for the reasons stated above.
The worst path would be the Ravens in the division round, and the Patriots in the AFC Championship. I’m picking the Ravens because their strengths align with the Chiefs’ weaknesses, they’d have the freedom of a rematch, and I believe they’re getting a little better each week. I’m picking the Patriots for what should be obvious reasons.
But, really. Other than the Patriots being the toughest matchup, I don’t feel particularly sure about any of it.
And it doesn’t matter.
First, let me say one more time that I feel bad about that. And not just because I meant to say “you,” but because I believe Bob to be a decent man who treats everyone with respect. I believe he should not have his job, but that doesn’t mean I don’t respect his football mind or believe he should be disrespected personally.
Now, I’m going to use your question to basically answer a different question: how much of what we saw against the Raiders was real?
It’s interesting that the Chiefs have been slowly but generally steadily improving in certain defensive metrics. They finished the season 26th in Football Outsiders’ DVOA. Perhaps more tellingly, they’re 17th in the weighted metric, which makes earlier games less important.
Seventeenth! Mediocrity never looked so good.
My point here is not that the defense is good.
My point here is that it can be good enough, in the right circumstance, against the right opponent. Their pass rush is strong, and if they’re in the right place at the right time for a few turnovers, they can win with the offense having a (for them) mediocre performance.
Let’s be clear. The defense isn’t good, and even getting to this low standard is far from a guarantee. There are so many basic problems to fix against good competition. Too many penalties, too many missed tackles, too many biffed assignments.
But there’s a path.
I dig it.
I don’t know this. I’m reading between the lines here a bit. An educated guess. But it sure looks like the blown two-point conversion against the Chargers benched Orlando Scandrick.
He hasn’t played since that moment, and Andy Reid said this in a press conference a few days later:
“You have to make sure you get in and out of the huddle and give yourself an opportunity to execute. That will be a focus this week.”
He was responding to a question about the noise in Seattle — and, again, I’m just following a hunch here — but I don’t think he wouldn’t said that without the blown play at the end of the Chargers game.
The advantage of Scandrick and Ron Parker is experience, of knowing assignments. If they’re not going to do that, then why not play the younger guys?
The downside is eliminated if the veterans are going to make basic mistakes anyway, and at least you get more energy, more competitiveness, more fight.
I’m all in, especially with Ward. He looks strong, aggressive, and a terrific tackler. He’s been beaten a few times, but it’s usually with good coverage, and he was significantly better in his second game.
This is just three plays, and he’s given up some completions, but this is what I’m thinking about:
On the first one, you see an ability to mirror, turn around, and knock the ball down. On the second, you see the same good coverage you saw on the deep ball to Doug Baldwin the week before but this time with the ability to find the ball and knock it down. On the third, you see enough length to cover what appears to be a well-placed pass on a crossing route.
That’s good position, awareness, and the ability to fight for the ball. He needs to improve. Nobody’s saying otherwise, and even my relatively enthusiastic endorsement is based largely on what should be expected of an undrafted rookie free agent being thrown into a secondary in flux.
But I do think he makes the Chiefs better. I think the opponent would rather play against Scandrick.
You guys: 8-8.
You might laugh at me, because that was my prediction before the season, but it was based on Mahomes being a human quarterback. It was based on the expectation that he would be occasionally spectacular, and occasionally wild.
I figured him for 4,000-and-some yards, 30-some touchdowns, and 20 or so interceptions. That’s an 8-8 quarterback.
But I think we can do this with the schedule, too. If the Chiefs had, say, Alex Smith at quarterback I think they would’ve lost in Pittsburgh*, in Denver**, in Oakland***, and against the Ravens****. That’s four. That’s the difference between 12-4 and 8-8.
* There is simply no way they win on the road while giving up 37.
** I’m sympathetic to the idea that Smith wouldn’t have been as bad as Mahomes in the first half, but he sure as heck also wouldn’t have been as good late.
*** Hoooo buddy the defense was bad that day.
**** Knocked down 15 times and needing a 4th and 9 miracle against the best defense in the league? C’mon. The Chiefs would’ve lost, and we’d have rightly blamed the game on the offensive line.
Man, I’ve made some mistakes in my life. Made some bad decisions that have worked against me personally, financially, and perhaps even professionally.
But I don’t think I’ve repeated the same mistakes, or at least, I’m not still repeating the same mistakes.
Except in one place.
I am standing here before you all to say that I am a chronic over consumer, all while constantly telling myself I’m going to get in better shape.
Me: I’m going to lose some fat, get in good shape.
Also me: It’s a Tuesday night, so I’m going to drink two stouts and eat a slice of cheesecake.
Is that a demon? I don’t know. Maybe not. Demon is probably a bit strong.
But I’d be skinnier if it was exorcised.
Then again, I do like stouts.
Let’s just go through them one by one:
- Sporting Kansas City loses the MLS Cup in Atlanta.
- Missouri goes 9-3 and plays in something like the Peach Bowl.
- K-State fans come around on Chris Klieman, who goes 7-5 before the bowl game but establishes some real stuff underneath it.
- Kansas basketball wins No. 15, but loses in the Elite Eight as Lagerald Vick’s jumper is off. Les Miles wins just three games, and people start to worry.
- Adalberto Mondesi isn’t as productive offensively, mostly because of plate discipline, but steals 50 bases and plays terrific defense as the Royals turn in a fairly entertaining and purposeful 69-93 season.
- Chris Jones and Tyreek Hill sign big extensions with the Chiefs, while Dee Ford takes the franchise tag.
- OK, fine: the Chiefs lose to the Patriots in the AFC Championship game despite five touchdown passes by Patrick Mahomes.
Andy Reid has a chance right now. He’d seal it with a Super Bowl win, which I believe he’ll have by the time he retires.
Travis Kelce just had one of the greatest seasons ever for a tight end — third most catches and second-most yards with 10 touchdowns. He’s only 29, and if he’s prime-ish for three more seasons he’ll approach the top five all time in receiving yards.
He had a bit of a late start (no catches until his age-25 season) but assuming health and a desire for a long career he could work his way into the Gonzalez-Witten-Gates-Sharpe territory.
Hard to see Colquitt making it. It took until four years ago for Ray Guy, and he’s the only one. I have no idea how to think of Hill. It’s so early in his career, and there’s no way to know how his speed will age, but if he’s paired with Mahomes for the next decade or so he could put up some enormous numbers.
There was a time not long ago that I thought Eric Berry had a shot. That always depended on health, and it sure doesn’t look like that will happen.
Chris Jones might have an outside shot. He’s only 24, but it’s way too early to talk about that.
I’ve put off mentioning the quarterback. Honestly, I think he’ll have that kind of career. But he’s 23, and I’m trying to be reasonable here.
Hadn’t thought about it like that until seeing all of this, but jeez, you’re right. That’s a lot, and you didn’t even include the Adidas trial, or Adalberto Mondesi’s emergence, or anything else you and I are both forgetting at the moment.
These things are always hard to quantify, because the recency bias is strong. Like, in 2012 the Royals had their Our Time debacle, the Chiefs had one of the most horrific seasons in NFL history, Snyder 2.0 got within two wins of the national championship game, Frank Martin finally had enough, Kansas pushed to the national final, and Sporting won the MLS Cup.
That’s ... a lot?
Then, obviously, no single story that happened this year or in 2012 is as memorable as what the Royals did in 2015 or, if we’re honest, 2014.
So, I don’t know how to measure any of these things. But it’s an eclectic mix of success and failure, of old chapters closing and new ones opening.
This doesn’t matter, and it’s the way of the world, but I’ll never stop wondering what Michael Porter would’ve done last year or what Jontay Porter would’ve done this season with good health.
Just a rotten thing that happened, twice.
There was a time where I not only owned one of those mid-2000s movie villain bluetooth earpieces but dutifully put it on every time I got in the car and, if you promise we’re in the trust tree here, may or may not have worn it in the grocery store a few times.
I am ashamed.
But other than that, it probably won’t surprise you to read that I’m usually pretty slow on the pop culture trend uptake.
I have to say, though: this scooter thing is a bit crazy.
They’re not safe, for starters, and I’m still not sure how it’s just cool with everyone that they’re constantly dumped in front yards or on random street corners.
I’ve spent most of my adult years campaigning the Peanut to offer The Mellinger: three wings, half a BLT* and Tank 7. They have so far declined, but you know the story of the tortoise and the hare.
* Triple, obvi.
Other endorsements I would accept: Bose, Apple, Hot Wheels, Wilson, Trader Joes, pretty much any brewery, and anyone offering a lifetime supply of triblend shirts.
Look, I would have very little trouble writing 10,000 words about this, but I’ll try to be concise(ish) here:
The point of life isn’t that you will grow up to be an independently wealthy philanthropist, loved by all and the curer of cancer. The point of life is that you’re probably going to be punched in the mouth, and you have to learn how to use that to make yourself better.
The point of sports isn’t that your team is going to win every championship. The point of sports is that your team is going to disappoint you WAY more than not, but you love the team anyway, both because of the moments along the way and because it’s your team.
If you’re lucky enough to watch a championship or two along the way, that’s great, and it’ll feel even better if you didn’t take the shortcut and decide at 12 years old to be a Miami Heat fan or something because they rented LeBron for a few years.
I’m thinking right now of my friend Nate Bukaty, who posted this shortly after Sporting’s loss in the MLS Western Conference final:
That’s the whole thing right there. Look at that picture and you see two painfully sad kids. You can see they’ve been crying. You know they got to stay up late, and you can see in their faces that they’re at the age where they still think everything’s going to work out. Well, it didn’t that night, and the shock and the hurt are there but you also see the love.
They’re together. They’re still wearing the hats. They’re with their dad. I love Nate’s message there, too. There are lessons in the pain. The end stunk, but if you grow up to be the kind of person who doesn’t think the ride was worth it, you’re going to have a really damn hard time in life.
Not because sports are important. It doesn’t matter whether you root for a team, and it matters even less whether the team you root for is any good.
What matters is what happens when something or someone you love disappoints you. What matters is what happens when you put your time and energy and hope into something and it lets you down. Could be a soccer team, could be a job promotion, could be your spouse or child or water heater.
What matters is what you do next. Sports aren’t tangibly important in the ways that matter most, but they might be the best way that exists to learn how to handle what’s important.
What I’m saying here is, let them hope.
Make them hope, if you can.
This week, I’m particularly grateful for another year of happiness. There were disappointments and setbacks and scares, same as many of you, but I’m lucky to have a strong wife and good friends to help make the good times matter more. I am married to the love of my life, helping raise two boys who change everyday, and a job that I enjoy. Cheers, you guys.