The sudden inevitability of the Kansas City Chiefs and a run back to the Super Bowl
The final seconds are a million hugs and a thousand screams and the happiest place in Kansas City celebrating another triumph for the Chiefs.
There’s Clark Hunt thanking the men who changed his franchise, there’s Patrick Mahomes surrounded by cameras, and there’s Frank Clark line-dancing (we think?).
The team that created national debate about whether its wins came by enough points will play for a second consecutive Super Bowl championship because of a blowout — 38-24 over the Bills in the AFC Championship Game at Arrowhead Stadium Sunday night.
“The job’s not finished,” Mahomes said. “When we went into the season, we weren’t talking about going to the Super Bowl. We were talking about winning it again. We’re trying to run it back, and we mean that.”
More on those three words in a minute — run it back — but for now, stand back a little, take a different view, and what we see is this: The franchise that for so long was surprising only in finding different ways to lose now feels something else entirely.
It feels inevitable.
This was the third consecutive AFC Championship Game at Arrowhead Stadium, and now the Chiefs will play for their second Lombardi Trophy in two seasons — more than they had in their first 49.
The Chiefs are 44-9 in Mahomes’ three seasons, including 6-1 in the playoffs. They’ll now face the only quarterback to end one of Mahomes’ seasons — the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ Tom Brady, such a constant in the NFL that his first Super Bowl came when Mahomes was just 6 years old.
From the Chiefs’ owner to the practice squad, they have called this their Run It Back Season. They put those words on T-shirts and face masks, on billboards and scoreboards. The team’s social media accounts used it constantly.
That’s an audacious motto, right? Remember how terribly wrong the Royals’ #OurTime season went in 2012? That thing was such a disaster that the franchise changed how it chose marketing slogans. From then on, the club’s baseball operations folks had final approval.
Here, with the Chiefs, it was football operations pushing for Run It Back. They welcomed the challenge, forget the risk.
“They embraced being the hunted,” general manager Brett Veach said. “They loved that challenge. These guys are always looking for ways to motivate themselves, so that was another way to do that.”
The NFL built a global empire largely on parity, with as many teams as possible believing they had a chance as late in seasons as possible. But Mahomes and these Chiefs appear to be changing the rules. They are working toward becoming the exception.
They’ve done this by becoming relentless. When they’re down, they’ll usually end up on top. And when they’re on top, they’ll definitely stay there. They are built on the moment when Mahomes has the ball, nothing but possibilities in front of him, reality stretched by Tyreek Hill’s speed, Travis Kelce’s talent, Andy Reid’s creativity.
In those moments, the Chiefs feel inevitable.
“The resiliency, how we’re going to handle adversity, I just love this team, man,” Kelce said. “This team has helped me in life in so many different ways, just because of how we handle adversity and how we win football games, and how we just keep getting better. I love it here, man.”
Kelce used the word resiliency, but in these playoffs they’ve been the ones breaking the other side’s resolve. Nick Wright, the Fox Sports 1 commentator (and Kansas Citian) came up with this absurd fact: The Chiefs’ 15 drives with Mahomes on the field this postseason have ended in seven touchdowns, four field goals, one missed field goal, two kneel-downs and one punt after a dropped 40-yard pass.
That is football’s version of inevitable.
The Chiefs are flawed, just like all groups of humans, and for much of this season that’s been the focus. Not enough pass rush, not enough pass protection, not enough touchdowns in the red zone or blowout wins.
Except, on the field, it’s the other side that often hasn’t had enough.
The feeling of inevitability comes at least in part in how this blend of talent and focus changes the rules of how games are won and lost. There is no such thing as perfect in football, but most teams have to play close to their best to get this far.
The Chiefs just played their best overall game, by some objective measures, and even that included two dropped interceptions, a dropped deep pass and a muffed punt.
“We’ve got room to get better,” Reid said. “We had a couple things that went a little haywacky today, but you stayed on course and we did a lot of good things. More good things than bad things. This job is a little bit like being a farmer: The work’s never done.”
The soundtrack of some of the Chiefs’ darkest moments was Todd Haley beginning post-game new conferences after losses with the same refrain: “We did too many of the things that get you beat.”
The unspoken part of that is the Chiefs — like most football teams — had a narrow path to beat another group of professionals. These Chiefs’ unique blend of talent and focus tilts everything in their favor, to the point that they can stack mistakes but then overwhelm with success.
Logically, that should be difficult to expect.
In reality, it is impossible not to.
Three years in and this is what we know: The push is inevitable, because Mahomes is playing quarterback with two potential Hall of Fame pass catchers, and safety Tyrann Mathieu is playing games with the opposing quarterback’s eyes and defensive tackle Chris Jones is done playing games with the quarterback’s blockers.
How many times have we seen this?
The Chiefs have now been down at least two scores in four of their last five playoff games, and they’ve won them all. The Bills — with all that hype, and all that Josh Allen — scored the game’s first nine points Sunday, and it felt quaint. Did anyone believe the Chiefs were buried?
This space used to feature a phrase so often that Chiefs fans would be justified in feeling mocked, because it happened over and over and over again, always in the most tender moments:
You never knew when the Chiefs would Chief, but you always knew they would Chief.
The phrase was about missed field goals and blown leads and, once, a touchdown pass the other quarterback threw to himself. The men in uniform changed, but the outcome did not — unless you’re into debating the difference between being punched in the temple and kicked in the gut.
You know how this went. Past tense. Very, very past tense.
You’ve stuck with us through the pain, so here is the payoff. Because you still don’t know when the Chiefs will Chief, and you still always know they will Chief.
This story was originally published January 24, 2021 at 11:17 PM.