Mellinger Minutes: lots and lots about the Chiefs winning Super Bowl LIV in Miami
My eyes are not exactly burning as I type these words. Let’s not get dramatic. But they are at least itchy, which is what happens when adrenaline and coffee help you hit a 1:30 a.m. deadline attempt to capture one of the biggest stories in Kansas City sports history and those same chemicals keep you up two or three hours more.
My guy Herbie goes back to his Army days, and he calls this time “coming down from a mission,” so we got back to our rental house and told some jokes and shook our heads and drank a few beers.
The alarm went off early, around 6:30, because Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes were booked for a news conference downtown to talk about changing the Chiefs and themselves forever by winning Super Bowl LIV.
Reid (obviously) wore a Hawaiian shirt and walked out from a holding room arm-in-arm with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who called the old coach one of his most trusted advisors.
Mahomes showed up in a red Showtime Mahomes T-shirt — an undeniable power move, but not nearly as much of a power move as winning Super Bowl MVP after playing the worst first three quarters of his professional career.
He was in middle school the first time he dreamed of telling the world he was going to Disneyworld after winning the Super Bowl, and he could not have believed that would happen before his 25th birthday. But there he was shaking hands with Mickey and hugging Minnie. As the mice walked off someone shouted to Mickey: “Be careful, she’s going to leave you!”
This job has a way of presenting the bizarre as normal, but something like this can’t be hidden: The Chiefs are Super Bowl champions, and most inside this room haven’t slept.
Reid — and I suppose it’s possible this was the lack of sleep in my ears — said he spent the night with his wife and Pitbull. Mahomes had his oldest friends in for the game, as well as his high school coach, the first one who refused to force Mahomes’ otherworldly talents into this world’s conventions.
“His aptitude is ridiculous,” Reid said.
“In reality, you never could imagine what this moment feels like,” Mahomes said.
Again, maybe this is the sleep deprivation talking but it sure felt like something fundamental was changing. Not just the same ol’ Chiefs narrative, though we’ll talk more about that in a minute.
If you believe like I do that sports are largely about confidence, and if you believe like I do that the pattern of Super Bowl losers often falling back further the next year is no coincidence, then you must believe like I do that by completing the second-biggest comeback in Super Bowl history, the Chiefs not only won their franchise’s first championship in 50 years but put themselves in position to add more soon.
That can’t-win-the-big-one pressure can be a mother, and if it hung on Mahomes the same way it’s hung on Reid for two decades it would’ve been the story of the next few years, at least.
Instead, that’s all gone. Mahomes has to feel invincible.
“He bulletproof,” teammate Tyrann Mathieu said.
There is just no telling what might happen next. Well, that’s not exactly true. Sleep will happen next.
But after that, who knows?
This week’s eating recommendation is the triple BLT and wings at the Peanut (I miss being home, give me a break) and the reading recommendation is Brian Phillips’ Kobe tribute.
Please give me a follow on Facebook and Twitter and as always thanks for your help and thanks for reading.
Fifty years, you guys. If a house is 50 years old you better have redone the kitchen, or updated the water line, or replaced the deck a few times.
Fifty years is way too long. That’s two generations, children born into this fandom who have lived long enough have children of their own, and then grandchildren, all while watching virtually everyone else celebrate. The Raiders won a more recent Super Bowl, then moved, then moved again, then moved AGAIN.
Fifty years. That’s long enough to build an identity. The Chiefs were always proud, and for most of the last 30 years or so they had some good teams. A few great players. And way too much heartbreak.
You see that long enough and you start to wonder if that’s just the way it’ll be. We can tell ourselves that there are no bad kids, only bad decisions, but it’s like Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy says: you are what you put on tape.
For long enough to assume this is how it would always be the Chiefs have turned game tape into horror shows — Lin Elliott in grainy standard definition, Marcus Mariota throwing a touchdown to himself in vivid HD.
We all tend to see these things through our own lens, and I keep going back to this. I grew up knowing the Chiefs as the franchise that turned 13-3 into the worst memories, often because their quarterback was a Honda racing against a Ferrari.
My kids are growing up knowing the Chiefs as the franchise that turns 10-point deficits into playoff triumphs, often because their quarterback is some sort of spacecraft the rest of us are still trying to understand.
What a time to be alive.
All of it, and, look:
Nothing is certain. Tomorrow is not guaranteed. The Dan Marino comparisons are now squashed, because Marino never won a Super Bowl, but Aaron Rodgers won his first Super Bowl after the 2010 season when he was 26 and on a team stocked with young talent and a favorable salary cap situation. The stories back then weren’t about whether he’d win another but about how many.
He’s still stuck on one.
That’s a big difference from being stuck on zero, obviously, but the point remains that Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs will have to earn (and get at least a little lucky) to win even one more.
We’re all adults here. We understand that. We also understand this:
Sorry playoff history and natural fan insecurities don’t matter as much when your team has a 24-year-old unicorn quarterback who turned three straight double digit playoff deficits into three straight double digit playoff wins.
We can all get caught up in the moment, and even if the last time Kansas City had a parade* we all understood that group had an expiration date on their time together I think most of us would’ve figured they had at least one more postseason in them.
* Drink.
But what if the Broncos had Mahomes?
And not just that, but what if the Broncos had Mahomes and a Hall of Fame coach and the league’s fastest receivers and perhaps the best tight end and a defense with enough stars to lead the league in fewest points allowed over the last six games?
Wouldn’t you assume those Broncos would win like eleventy Super Bowls?
The Chiefs are unlikely to match or approach the Patriots’ last two decades — we may never see anything like that again — but here’s a simple question.
Which is more likely: that Mahomes wins zero more Super Bowls, or that he wins two or three more?
One of the advantages that shift games toward next level quarterbacks is that the talent is coupled with a heightened belief and focus and selflessness from everyone around them.
Football coaches love to talk about sacrifice, and of guys believing in the whole over self. That’s a hell of a lot easier when the guys you’re asking to sacrifice believe there’s a Super Bowl at the end of it.
We’ve seen coaches try to get guys to give that extra 2 percent for a 7-9 team. It doesn’t work.
But as long as Mahomes is healthy, and as long as he remains this focused, and this selfless, then what is impossible?
That’s exactly what I’m talking about here. The Chiefs had a dozen chances to go same ol’ Chiefs this season.
They could’ve done it when they struggled against man overage, or when Mahomes’ kneecap slipped, or when they couldn’t cover running backs in the passing game, or when the defense went limp in Nashville.
They could’ve subconsciously gone on vacation when down 24 to the Texans, or played more for a moral victory than an actual one. They could have let Derrick Henry truck them again. They could have let the frustrations of four 49ers pass rushers getting pressure and seven defenders covering receivers and a 10-point deficit with 9 minutes left turn into too much.
The same ol’ Chiefs would’ve let this season detour a bunch of times, and probably would’ve lost each of these playoff games two different ways. Travis Kelce dropped early passes. Tyreek Hill dropped a punt. The interior of the line struggled. On and on.
A moment in my walk around the Super Bowl winning locker room stood out and, well, that’s not exactly true. A lot of moments stood out, and I do hope you read the game column, but the moment that’s in my mind is Tyrann Mathieu describing the looks he exchanged with Andy Reid during the game.
“He was like, ‘Yo, you got this?’” Mathieu said. “I’m like, ‘Coach, I promise you! We got this!’”
There is a lot to unpack there, including that Reid sort of famously goes hands off with the defense. He’ll spend entire defensive possessions sitting on the bench with Mahomes, going over plans, talking through adjustments, ignoring everything on the field.
But the moments Mathieu described are a reminder about why guys on the defense talk of Reid in most of the same ways as those on offense. It’s a reminder that this team did it together, not just with offense and defense but with special teams.
Last year, we saw the flaws of going one-dimensional. A quarterback as good as Mahomes leading an offense as good as the 2018 Chiefs will always give a team a chance, but never give that team security.
The offense actually slid back a bit in 2019, at least statistically. Whatever chunk of blame you want to assign to injuries is fine but reasonable people would agree that the difference was the Chiefs no longer had just one way to win.
As much as anything else, that’s what I associate with the Chiefs’ past playoff failures. Each of those teams that broke your heart was limited in how they could win. In the 90s, they needed to maul the other quarterback and hope their own played well. In 2003, they needed to be perfect on offense and provide at least some resistance on defense.
For most of the Alex Smith years they could not deal with any letdown in any phase. How many teams can lose a playoff game at home without giving up a touchdown? How many can blow 21-3 and 38-10?
Well, this team could win in different ways. Special teams — after some rough moments early in the season — consistently won late. The offense was absurdly efficient when healthy, especially in the playoffs.
And the defense made it all matter. Offenses get the credit, and that’s the way of the world, but behind every good comeback is a defense that makes it possible.
Chris Jones dominated late in the Super Bowl and Frank Clark was the first man with five sacks in a postseason since Von Miller after the 2015 season. They made stops when they needed them, held the 49ers long enough for the offense to recover and kept holding them long enough for the comeback to be made.
That’s the stuff I think about a lot right now. None of this means there won’t be disappointment. Mahomes may end up the best quarterback in league history someday, but that doesn’t mean the Chiefs won’t ever break your heart again.
It just means that when it happens, you won’t have to wonder if that’s your team’s “forever.”
Maybe. Probably. Objectively, yes.
The Super Bowl is just bigger. It’s bigger than anything that happens in college sports, it’s bigger than the World Series. It’s bigger than anything in soccer, other than the World Cup. It’s bigger than Goose off Gossage, and it’s bigger than Hosmer sprinting home. It just is. You can be an NFL fan or not. Facts are facts — toward the end of the Super Bowl, 97 percent of televisions that were on were on the game.
NINETY-SEVEN PERCENT!
I believe that we’ve seen the two biggest sports moments in Kansas City history in the last five years. Sports are more popular now than ever. We can dissect TV ratings but more people watch, more people care, more money is spent and more time devoted to sports than ever before.
When the Royals won in 1985 most regular-season games weren’t on TV. When they won in 2015, virtually every game was broadcast in HD, and available on demand with an internet connection.
More people watched Kansas City triumph on Sunday than ever before. It’s supposed to be cold as heck, a high of 29, but I’m betting more people will be at the parade on Wednesday than showed up in 2015 for the Royals — and that was the biggest party in Kansas City history.
The Royals’ championship is the only thing that compares in scope, but they were so different in specifics.
The Royals’ win seemed to feel a little more personal, with more buildup. Fans had known that team’s stars for years. They had watched them fall, watched them get up, watched them succeed. When it finally happened, that championship was a comet. We all knew the window was closing, every moment precious.
The Chiefs’ win seems to feel a little bigger, more national, the triumph of a group that will remain in the spotlight coast to coast for years. This was 50 years in the making, and seven with Andy Reid, but this last burst happened fast. Mahomes’ second season as a starter. The first with a remade defense.
This championship is a movie, and I think most of us figure we’ll probably get a sequel.
Well, look, I know I take these questions too literally but is it OK if I say the Hunt family doesn’t top the list?
Please! I can explain!
This is not a slam on the Hunts. Clark deserves credit. He has made his father’s team his own, and provided necessarily updates for the modern world, and how could you not be happy for Norma?
But those aren’t the people I think about first. I mean this respectfully: the Hunts aren’t why the Chiefs are the Chiefs. That’s true now that the Chiefs are champions, and it was true back when the Chiefs were awful.
The Hunts are not what make the team Kansas City’s most beloved institution. They’re not why anyone buys a ticket, or plans their day around kickoff. Maybe Chris Jones said it best:
So, anyway. Should we do this with a list? Let’s do it with a list!
10. The offensive line. You have probably figured out I really like those guys. They’re usually my first stop after games, and not just because they’re always professional and friendly even after losses. I learn from them. I love hearing the game from their perspective, the group that protects the franchise.
“Unbelievable,” Austin Reiter said late Sunday night when I asked if it felt like he dreamed. “I mean, the (expletive) journey I’ve taken to get here. I’ve been 1-15, I’ve been 0-16, but I kept working. Kept fighting. We worked our ass off to be in this, all of us.”
9. Tyrann Mathieu. He is, basically, the Patrick Mahomes of the defense. He is intellectually advanced, physically gifted, blessed with a charisma and story teammates are drawn toward and willing to give enough of himself that they’re better for it.
“This just doesn’t happen for a lot of guys,” he said late Sunday night when I asked which part of his journey here stood out the most. “Guys don’t get paid, then come to a good team, with a good locker room, with a good DB room. I just told these guys how much I appreciated them. It could’ve been the other way around. I could’ve been a bad leader. This moment could’ve been too big for me.
“I’m just proud of those guys more than anything, because they make me look good, right? I get all the credit, but if it didn’t work I’d get all the blame, too. Those guys helped me. They helped me change the narrative. It wasn’t just me. It was those guys, committing themselves.”
I pointed out the obvious, that that’s exactly what a leader would say. Mathieu laughed.
“Yeah, but for real, though,” he said. “I mean it.”
8. Brett Veach. When I say Veach, I don’t just mean him. I mean the whole front office. They’ve heard the stuff about being Reid’s yes-men, or that they were too young, too inexperienced.
They heard it, then took a good roster and turned it into a world championship roster.
7. Chris Jones. At the risk of giving athletes credit for what should be expected, he handled a potentially contentious contract situation with class and grace.
He could have held out; he showed up on time.
He could have pouted about Frank Clark getting the contract he wanted; he worked like hell and formed a friendship and partnership with Clark that they kept branding sack nation.
Every championship includes dozens of landmines dodged, and Jones took care of this one on his own. A bad attitude could’ve wrecked the season. A great attitude helped propel it to a championship.
6. Charvarius Ward. Yes, fine. I just like the guy. But how could you not feel good for him? He was in a wheelchair as a kid, so poor he went without hot water for years at a time, so depressed during training camp he thought about quitting and asking for a trade.
Now, he’s a Super Bowl champion.
“Best moment of my life,” he said. “I saw my mama on the field after the game, she got emotional and man, that made me emotional too.”
5. The assistants. Some of these guys, like Allen Wright, have put in decades of almost entirely anonymous work. Some, like Rick Burkholder, have taken more than their share of criticism*.
* I’ll admit I still don’t get how Alex Smith’s bleeding ear wasn’t enough to keep him out of a game, but that’s more of an NFL issue than anything else.
Some, like Eric Bieniemy, have earned promotions that they’re still waiting on. They’ve all been crucial parts of their profession’s ultimate prize.
4. Former players and staff. Speaking of Wright, look what he posted:
Now, to be sure: most of that is Wright being humble. But the message is full of sincerity, too, and it made me think of all sorts of alumni: Bill Maas, Jamaal Charles, Tim Grunhard, Carl Peterson, Marty Schottenheimer, Deron Cherry, Denny Thum, Bob Moore and so many others.
Alex Smith should get a ring, by the way. I assume it’d be tampering. The Chiefs should do it anyway.
3. Patrick Mahomes. What do you feel for the guy who already has all the feels?
Look, maybe the day will come when Mahomes is different. Callused. Jaded. People talk about that. People have asked me about it. There are times he seems too good to believe, and often when that’s the case the shine is temporary.
Maybe he’ll be less earnest. Less polite. This is a small thing, and maybe nobody notices or cares but me, but in these big group interviews during Super Bowl week dozens of reporters surround the game’s biggest star and shout questions.
Mahomes routinely found familiar faces from Kansas City — those of us at the Star, Teicher, Terez, perhaps others that I didn’t notice — and locks eyes to hear the question. He cuts through the noise of the week for us, and helps make sure we can do our jobs.
Again, it’s a small thing, and maybe there’s some self interest here: he knows we’re not asking something off the wall.
But I do believe there’s also some thoughtfulness, that he reached the biggest stage but wants to make sure the audience back home is still connected.
2. Andy Reid. I can’t say much that Vahe didn’t say in his game column. I hope you read it.
I’ll only add this: that type of outpouring of support from current players, former players, assistants, former assistants, strangers and stars does not happen often and it does not happen by accident.
The NFL is a brutal business, and men who enter with all the best intentions are often pushed beyond their limits. Shortcuts are made. Coaches can begin to make time or energy only for those who can do something for them. It can get very selfish, very fast.
I’m sure Reid has moments he’d like back. We all do. But I’m also sure that the way he’s loved long after players or coaches are done working with him is as true a testament about who he is as anything I can imagine.
1. Fans. You. Your friends. Your family.
We all have our part in turning sports into more than they were intended to be. Some of that is good, some bad, but all of it is a reflection of the collective we. The athletes and coaches and the executives and the owners can seem bigger than all of it, like they’re the ones in control, but that’s a lie.
Fans set the terms. The minute the experience isn’t worth the effort the whole thing craters. Fans are the ones who care long enough to make 50 years without a Super Bowl a thing. Fans are the ones who care hard enough for athletes and executives to become rich and sometimes even wealthy.
Athletes and coaches start out as fans, but once you get inside the bubble perspective changes. All the stuff about Andy Reid wanting to win for those around him is probably true. I have no reason to doubt it, and plenty of reasons to believe it. He is forever connected to the Chiefs now, and to Kansas City.
But he was also working feverishly to accomplish the same thing in Philadelphia. Steve Spagnuolo did a wizard’s work this season, but he was working for the same thing with the Giants, and the Rams, and the Eagles. Patrick Mahomes will almost certainly be the best athlete in Kansas City history (if he’s not there already) but he didn’t choose this. If the draft went a different way he’d be doing this in New Orleans or Arizona or New York.
Fans don’t have that sort of path. They choose their own and they stick with it, even when they’re mad, even when they feel disconnected. They usually come back. When they do, it’s because of moments like this that make the whole dance worth it.
I will agree with some of this, and quibble with the rest.
Agree: Damien Williams was a boss against the 49ers. He might’ve been the Chiefs’ best player through three quarters, though Mitchell Schwartz, Chris Jones, Tyrann Mathieu and others would also have a case.
Williams scored the go-ahead touchdown, probably the single most important touchdown in franchise history, a balletic catch and turn that required elite focus and balance. He made defenders miss all night, taking the yards given to him and often making more of his own.
He will be remembered fondly forever as an important part of this, and if he won Super Bowl MVP I don’t think (m)any would’ve complained.
But Mahomes did not win on name recognition. He was not a poor choice.
He scored the first touchdown, and was the trigger man for the second biggest comeback in Super Bowl history. He was more than a facilitator, too, not just maximizing the calls but pushing Reid to go for one fourth down and to call the play that changed the game.
His throw to Tyreek Hill on that 3rd-and-15 was absurd. It kept the Chiefs alive, and was a play that maybe one or two other humans on the planet could’ve made. Maybe.
Mahomes threw two interceptions, yes, and the first one was particularly wretched. But that’s the cover charge against excellent defenses, and the 49ers possess an excellent defense.
Focus too much on that and you miss the other stuff. Through three quarters Mahomes played perhaps his worst game as a pro. In the fourth quarter he added to his legend, leading drives of 83 yards on 10 plays, then 65 yards on seven plays, then 42 yards on two. Three touchdowns in 5:01.
I didn’t have a vote. Herbie did, and voted for Mahomes. I’d have probably done the same. But Williams would’ve also been a fine choice.
Aww, shucks, and Bill seems to know that pointing out when your boy got one right is a time-proven way to be part of Kansas City’s favorite weekly sports journalism gimmick!
There were no certainties with this. The broader mission could’ve been wrecked a bunch of different ways.
What if Frank Clark didn’t recover from the nerve damage?
What if Kendall Fuller didn’t buy in on switching to safety in a contract year?
What if Anthony Hitchens and the other linebackers were overwhelmed with problems covering backs in the passing game?
What if Chris Jones didn’t handle his contract situation like a pro?
What if Mike Pennel didn’t become available? Same question but with Terrell Suggs?
What if Bashaud Breeland lost confidence after all those penalties early, or what if Charvarius Ward didn’t recover from a loss of confidence so deep he thought about quitting?
We tend to see the final result and reverse engineer the process in a way that makes the whole thing seem inevitable, but it’s rarely like that.
I was betting on a few things being true.
First, I believed that Veach and the front office improved the personnel. And I believed they did it smartly, specifically with the idea that Mathieu and Clark would bring a certain and desperately needed swagger. I believed that Steve Spagnuolo and his assistants represented a significant upgrade in coaching*.
* I wrote enough about Bob Sutton needing to be fired that I feel like I should emphasize something. Sutton is not a bad coach. I believe he’s a very good coach. I just believe the message had expired. It wasn’t working.
One other thing: I believed that the Chiefs had an excellent head coach and a transcendent quarterback, and that the combination would be a tide to lift all boats.
Mahomes is different. Before he got to Kansas City, I’d hear people talk of particular athletes in these ways — maybe LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Tom Brady, and that might be the list — and assume it was all hooey.
But the talent is ridiculous, and the leadership so strong. When I say he makes everyone better, I don’t mean it’s some magic trick. I mean that guys play harder because they think they have a chance. They know they have a chance.
That sort of context doesn’t always happen. When it does, the chance for something special exists.
Heck yeah. And they’re growing up spoiled — you know that, right?
Sports can be the best. Usually they’re not. But, man.
When it works it’s like nothing else.
My theory: Reid and the infrastructure (Alex Smith included) represented the perfect place for Mahomes. Maybe something similar would’ve existed with the Saints, if that happened, but Mahomes joined a winning team with a Hall of Fame coach and elite playmakers.
Of course that helps, and of course he had a giant head start on Mitch Trubisky and Deshaun Watson and basically every other quarterback who’s come into the league.
But the rest of the theory is that we had two decades to see what Reid is without Mahomes, and what we saw is that he’s an excellent coach who made one Super Bowl and won zero.
With Mahomes, he’s lost one AFC Championship Game in overtime and won a Super Bowl with an all-time comeback.
If you want to make the case that Mahomes would not be this productive or effective if he was drafted by, say, the Lions ... fine. I agree.
And I agree with your premise that the partnership is about more than Mahomes and Reid being excellent on their own. Their strengths complement each other. Reid is the perfect man to extract the most from Mahomes’ gifts, and Mahomes is the perfect quarterback to unlock the most from Reid’s mind.
But if the NFL decided tomorrow that in the interest of fairness the Chiefs had to pick between Reid and Mahomes, well, they’re looking for a new coach.
Bieniemy, probably.
I believe a few things about Mahomes’ next contract.
- I believe some sort of structure is generally in place.
- I believe that the years and total price are just part of how each side will view it.
- I believe that the years and price will basically be whatever Mahomes and his agent Chris Cabott want.
- I also believe (and you didn’t bring this up but others have) that it’s a little unfair, unrealistic, and sort of missing the point to expect Mahomes to take significantly less on the deal to help the team.
OK. Should we unpack that stuff a little bit?
Mahomes’ team and the players union in general likely view this contract as a potential milemarker in the ongoing power struggle between players and owners. Players don’t often have this kind of juice, and when they do, there are forces at play beyond the specific player and his agent.
Unions in all industries, not just sports, view deals like this as precedent. Maybe it sounds backwards but there will be internal pressure on Mahomes to maximize his value. That way, others might follow.
This is some of what I mean when I say the years and total price are just part of the deal. What if the new deal didn’t quite max out on value, but came fully guaranteed? That would be an important step for players.
What if it came with a structure tied to a percentage of the salary cap? That would be new. There are all sorts of possibilities here.
But you asked for numbers, and I’ll give you two possibilities.
The first is the less realistic. I’ve always wondered if Mahomes would be interested in an exceptionally long contract for an exceptional amount of money: say, 10 years and $400 million.
For the union, it would blow all precedent away. New possibilities would exist. Mahomes would secure generations of wealth, and with that much money and that many years the team could maintain some cap flexibility.
It is likely that by the midway point of that deal the league’s cap and other salaries would have grown enough to make the contract team friendly, but perhaps some language could be added for an additional percentage of the cap, or an option for Mahomes to renegotiate if a certain number of quarterbacks passed him in salary.
The more realistic play seems to be something like four years and $160 million. That could include a huge signing bonus up front, with the extension kicking in after 2020, when he’s set to make around $5 million. He’d have the juice to get an exclusion from the franchise tag, similar to Drew Brees.
That’s obviously a ton of money, and Mahomes would have a little more power on a short-term deal. Worst case scenario he’s a potential free agent again before his 30th birthday. Something like that could work for both sides.
But, I do want to be clear: I am a dummy with a keyboard, not an agent. I’m just spitballing here.
Man, I actually think about this a lot. His appeal and popularity feel unassailable at the moment. He’s exciting, productive, engaging, beloved by teammates, respected by opponents. There’s not much to poke holes at.
But the world keeps no man universally popular forever. Basketball fans got tired of Michael Jordan, for goodness’ sake.
My guess is that the “criticisms” will start with people saying he’s benefitting from coaching and teammates more than the mainstream narrative. It will pick up at the first team or personal failure, which really hasn’t come yet, because they’ve taken a step forward in each of his two seasons.
Because what if the comeback against the Texans didn’t click?
Or what if Garoppolo hits that deep ball to Sanders, or Chris Jones couldn’t have knocked down the pass intended for George Kittle (who Kyle Shanahan got isolated on *Suggs*)?
What if a dozen factors outside of Mahomes’ control had conspired against him, instead of for him?
What if he gets hurt next year, or he loses a couple linemen, or Kelce or Hill?
Basically: what happens when he’s no longer soaring toward the sun?
The backlash will come. It’ll be sarcastic at first, I’d suspect, but then will be filled in by people who genuinely (and understandably, in some ways) are growing tired of hearing so much about one person in one of the world’s ultimate team sports.
So I guess in that way my answer is less about how many more wins, and more about how many losses.
I think the criticism is going to come if they don’t make next year’s Super Bowl. I know that sounds absurd. It probably is absurd. But I think that’s going to happen.
Herbie wrote about that after the game, and it sounds like the team is open to it. Andy Reid said he’d go.
These trips have been politicized in recent years, so assuming the Chiefs are invited there will be a sort of public role call about who goes and who doesn’t. It’s impossible to synch the schedules of 53 players, plus support staff.
My guess is that Clark Hunt would want as many as possible. These are just guesses: Patrick Mahomes and Anthony Sherman would be there; Frank Clark and Travis Kelce would find previous commitments.
One thing I can’t imagine doing: writing or thinking any judgments on anyone based on any decision.
Some guys will want to rest, some will want to be on the beach. Some might just not have the interest. Others might feel a deep calling, one way or the other.
More power to them, whatever they decide.
In 2013 if anybody said “In the next 7 years the Royals will go to two World Series in a row and win one and the Chiefs will draft the best player in all of sports and win the Super Bowl” please raise your hand.
Yeah I didn’t think so either. Kansas City is Titletown!
I have not double checked Christopher’s math here, and I know that including MLS shrinks the eligible cities, but either way that’s pretty remarkable.
When the Royals and Chiefs have stunk, they’ve stunk hard.
But when they’ve succeeded, they’ve gone big.
We’ve done the thing a few times before where I try and fail to explain exactly what happens when you grow up cheering for certain teams, dreaming of having a certain job, working toward that exact job, and how that tilts your perspective on those teams.
I usually shorthand it like this: I do not believe the way I follow sports now is better than the way I would if I had a real job, and I do not believe it’s worse.
I just know it’s different.
It’s different because I’m not screaming during games, and my nerves aren’t so tied to the outcome that I need a Tank 7 or three* to cope. It’s different because I’m looking at the game through a very specific lens, thinking about it in a way I wouldn’t otherwise, because that’s what the job I’ve always wanted requires.
* A Tank 21!
The kick of it is that I’m no less invested, but I’ve come to see my role as something else. I want to help make the experience of following these teams just a blink better. That’s my job. That’s my purpose.
I don’t think I can do that by cheering, and I also don’t think I can do that if I lose touch with what you’re feeling. That’s a balance that probably doesn’t make sense to normal people. But it’s my North Star.
That’s a long way to get to the answer to your question. Absolutely, I was a fan the other night. Without question. But I was not a fan high-fiving my friends, or taking selfies in celebration. I was a fan because I know so many of you, and am bottomlessly happy for you and the city so many of us love.
You deserve it. Goodness knows your fandom has been through enough. I’m forever thankful that you’ve allowed me to be a small part of it.
This week, I’m particularly grateful that I’m not gone from my family for a week very often, and that when I am it’s for a good reason and knowing that my wife has everything locked down at home. I’m also grateful that the kids are getting into the ages where we can have actual conversations on FaceTime, even if I know that with the younger one it means we get off the phone with my wife having a thousand screen grabs saved in photos.
This story was originally published February 4, 2020 at 12:43 PM.