The Chiefs are living rent-free in their opponents’ heads. Next up: Buffalo Bills
If the Chiefs’ 15-game winning streak and 9-0 start — which have hinged on bizarre last-play twists and double-digit comebacks and turns of momentum — seems inexplicable, well, there’s a reason for that.
Those harrowingly narrow margins of victory over such a span are unprecedented in NFL history: a total of 58 points this season and an average of 6.6 points a game in the overall streak.
So to some degree it’s a phenomenon that defies explanation.
“Because you’re trying to make sense out of something that you don’t really have examples to go on …” said Dan Wann, a professor of psychology at Murray State and devout Chiefs fan who went to Shawnee Mission North High. “It doesn’t really remind me of anybody.”
No doubt there are at least some semi-parallels to the Chiefs, whom Wann called both the “best yank-victory-from-defeat team I’ve ever seen” and, in a playful text to his brother, “the worst great team in the history of sports.”
But whatever past such teams you can conjure, there’s not much that approximates the conviction of this feeling by now, Wann said: “It’s like every time the Chiefs are down a touchdown, you just think, ‘Yeah, we got ‘em right where we want ‘em. … Too bad for them.’ ”
Wann, the co-author of “Sports Fans: The Psychology and Social Impact of Fandom,” was making a point about the fan experience.
But the nationally recognized expert who also has worked directly with numerous athletes believes there is something of a living, breathing element to this sensation in both the Chiefs and their opponents.
If you’re the Chiefs right now, Wann said, you likely feel a certain aura of invincibility.
At least entering their game Sunday at Buffalo (8-2) ... because the obvious caveat here is that it’s all true until it isn’t anymore.
But when you win again and again and again and again while staring at seemingly insurmountable late-game win probabilities — as with the walk-off blocked field goal last week against Denver and Baltimore’s Isaiah Likely being out of the zone by inches on the final play against the Ravens — it perpetuates a mindset that can directly impact play.
“If you fervently believe that you’re never out of it,” Wann said, “you seem to be never out of it again.”
What Wann likened to a self-fulfilling prophecy animates an approach that says, “‘I honestly believe I’m not out of this, so I’m going to continue battling and fighting with this belief that we’re eventually going to win.’
“And then you do. And then that just reinforces it for the next game and reinforces it for the next game. It’s why the best predictor of future success is past success, and the predictor of future failure is past failure, right?”
Speaking of which, there’s something intangible but nonetheless lurking over the other side of this dynamic in the minds of opponents.
At least subconsciously, and at times more directly, that pattern can lead to the other team “kind of waiting for the weird thing to happen,” as Wann put it.
“Then when it happens,” he said, “you almost feel helpless against it.”
That was perhaps nicely symbolized by Tampa Bay quarterback Baker Mayfield’s exasperated reaction to the Chiefs winning the overtime coin-toss a couple of weeks ago.
In realizing he probably wouldn’t touch the football again, Mayfield’s response illuminated the ambient vibe of playing the Chiefs — who won that game 30-24 on Kareem Hunt’s 2-yard touchdown run.
That doesn’t mean the Bucs, or any other teams, have a defeatist mentality against the Chiefs, who as two-time defending Super Bowl champions and the envy of the NFL typically inspire everything the other team has.
You hardly can be in the NFL, let alone part of a good-to-great team, if you’re not at the height of the profession and always expecting to win.
But the experience of going up against them for most of the last year has been the Chiefs continually winning games, as Wann put it, “that for all intents and purposes, they’re supposed to lose.”
And thus several opponents losing games that for all intents and purposes they were supposed to win.
Over and over and over, Wann said, there has to be a cumulative impact: “‘How do they keep doing that? … What does it take? … How are they 9-0?’”
Almost adding to the mystique is that very idea of the inexplicable.
In the aftermath of losing to the Chiefs, Wann said, it’s almost simpler to cope with the idea that KC is a team of destiny than the fact that Patrick Mahomes is amazing in the clutch. Or that it was the Chiefs’ scheming, emphasis and execution that enabled a blocked field goal — unfathomable as it was.
“‘They’ve got karma on their side,’” Wann said. “That’s a lot easier mentality than. ‘It would be really nice if our offensive line could actually block on that field goal. That would have been a really good idea.’”
What this might mean against Buffalo is its own distinct matter. The Bills, after all, have won their last three regular-season games against the Chiefs.
But they also have suffered three straight postseason losses to Kansas City — including the soul-crushing 13-second game and a 20-17 home loss last season marked by Tyler Bass missing a potential game-tying field goal in the final two minutes.
So whatever happens Sunday won’t necessarily flip anything in the most meaningful way — what it means in the postseason — beyond the fact that this weekend’s game holds top-seed and home-field advantage implications for the playoffs.
Oh, but one other thing.
A victory would mean a 16th straight win for the Chiefs, five short of the NFL record held by the New England Patriots. And it would mean they’re 10-0, with their perceived most challenging opponent behind them and the prospect of going undefeated beginning to become a valid topic.
Welcome as this would be for the Chiefs and their fans, Wann said, that wouldn’t necessarily be all good.
Because the idea that those kinds of streaks can become a burden is real.
“It’s desired pressure; it’s welcomed pressure, right?” Wann said. “But it’s pressure.”
Especially considering the Chiefs already are seeking to become the first team to win three straight Super Bowls — a related but distinct task.
“Teams have won 10 games to start the season ...” Wann said. “Teams have won 11 games to start a season. Nobody’s ever won three Super Bowls in a row.”
He added, “They have yet to accomplish anything that hasn’t happened.”
At least not in that way.
But until proven otherwise, the Chiefs’ unparalleled find-a-way streak sure has them on that trajectory.