Why winning AFC West never gets old for the Chiefs, even if they have bigger goals
Considering all the gaudy feats of the recent past for the Chiefs — like playing in six straight AFC Championship Games and four of the last five Super Bowls and winning three of those — maybe it’s hard to feel moved now by something that seems mundane and secondary.
Like clinching a ninth straight AFC West divisional title, as the Chiefs did on Sunday night with another confounding and excruciating final-play victory, when kicker Matthew Wright caromed in a 31-yard field goal off the left upright —more wacky stuff for the slapstick reel — to foil the visiting Chargers 19-17.
Just the same, it’s worth pausing to appreciate the broader context of this phenomenon, both in terms of the contrast from when it began to now, and in the sense of how it’s a fundamental pillar of everything else.
In the locker room after the game, long-snapper James Winchester smiled as he thought back to what suddenly seems like a remote past:
The last time the Chiefs didn’t win the division, 2015, Peyton Manning was the quarterback of the defending Super Bowl champion Denver Broncos — the nemesis that had won five straight division titles to amplify the point that a once-proud Kansas City franchise gone adrift had managed just two of those since 1997.
“It’s been a minute,” said Winchester, who along with Travis Kelce are the only two Chiefs who were with the team before that pivot.
All that has happened in that “minute” was in part enabled by what might be considered an opposite bookend: On the way to that 2016 AFC West title, the Chiefs beat the Broncos 30-27 in overtime on Cairo Santos’ 34-yard field goal in overtime.
As the kick ascended into the left upright in Denver, holder Dustin Colquitt slumped and put his hand to his helmet in woebegone anticipation that Santos had missed.
“Called the bank shot … just forgot to tell Colquitt,” Santos tweeted later.
When the Chiefs went on to finish 12-4 and win the West by going 6-0 against division foes to own the tie-breaker over the Raiders, it proved to be a watershed moment for the franchise.
As if it exorcised a mindset or the sheer drag of a brutal phase in franchise history, the Chiefs soon went on to win their first playoff game in 22 years.
And you know what’s happened since for a team that in those moments in the crucible just figures it will find a way.
Not incidentally because of taking care of first things first by dominating the division.
So much so that the Chiefs have won 53 of their last 61 against West foes.
After the game Sunday night, chairman and CEO Clark Hunt reflected on what it meant then and now in the greater scheme of things.
While acknowledging “in a lot of ways when you do something for the first time it’s more special,” he also noted that you still never take them for granted.
Then he thought about what it came to empower.
“We didn’t know what was ahead of us,” he said. “It’s been a very special time period for the Kansas City Chiefs. Amazing era for Chiefs football.”
As awe-inspiring as the 1960s were for the franchise — the team won three AFL titles and played in two of the first four Super Bowls, winning Super Bowl IV — what’s happened these last five years in particular makes these the good old days of the future.
With more at stake as the Chiefs seek to make history with an unprecedented third straight Super Bowl win.
That lofty stuff is what we all think about now, of course, not the journey — especially as unsightly as this one often seems, with game after game after game of wondering when their vulnerabilities will do them in.
Meanwhile, though, there’s zero doubt that winning the way they do reflects a mindset — not to mention, oof, a pattern of living on the edge that we’ve witnessed during each of their Super Bowl-winning seasons.
And it’s also not hard to draw a causal connection between the Chiefs’ overarching grit and resolve and the way the essentials are most on display and formed in their division games.
That’s why, quarterback Patrick Mahomes said, “it’s our first goal every single year.”
And one achieved once more in a season in which three of four teams in the division (including the Chargers and Broncos) could well be in the playoffs.
So it’s hardly the end-all.
But it’s been both a gateway and part of the mortar of what these Chiefs teams have come to achieve.
“We’re not just putting the tent up right here and calling it a day,” coach Andy Reid said, later adding, “It’s a great achievement. But there’s more left.”
A long way from when it felt like this was the real achievement.
This story was originally published December 9, 2024 at 5:00 AM.