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Here we are again, it’s early February and the Kansas City Chiefs are still playing football. It is a sight we’ve grown accustomed to in the Patrick Mahomes era. The Chiefs have been to the AFC title game all six seasons with Mahomes at the helm and this will be his fourth Super Bowl appearance for Kansas City.
For the first time in recent memory, we saw a very underwhelming and imperfect Chiefs team. Kansas City lacked offensive weapons and were forced to work with a much younger receiving core after losing Tyreek Hill and JuJu Smith-Schuster in back-to-back offseasons. They had new faces on the offensive line and the group struggled at times, Tackle Jawaan Taylor was called for the most penalties in the regular season with a total of 19, seven more than the next-highest lineman.
Heading into the bye week the Chiefs were 7-2, but they surely did not feel like the Chiefs of old. They put up some lackluster performances on offense, and they were just not clicking. Drops were one of the biggest plagues to their efficiency in moving the ball down the field and had only scored more than 24 points three times.
Defensive Coordinator Steve Spagnuolo’s unit kept the squad afloat, allowing only 17.3 points per game. It was by far their best mark in the Andy Reid & Patrick Mahomes era.
Coming out of the bye, the Chiefs lost four of their next six games. This included an awful Christmas Day loss to the Las Vegas Raiders led by Alex O’Connell. Uncharacteristic miscues like dropped passes or the Kadarius Toney offsides call that negated one of the most insane touchdowns of all time in their 20-17 loss to Buffalo, accounted for the struggles.
The Chiefs finished with two big wins to clinch the AFC West Championship for the eighth year in a row, good enough for the three-seed in the AFC Playoffs. This showed that despite all of the ugly ball on display this year, and all of the Chief doubters, this team could still turn it on when they needed to. And boy oh boy, have they turned it on.
The Chiefs took down a Dolphins team that looked like one of the best teams in the NFL at one point of the season in the Wild Card Round. Then Mahomes went on the road for the FIRST TIME in his playoff career and sent the Bills packing in Buffalo. Following that performance, they went to Baltimore and beat the Ravens and MVP Lamar Jackson in the AFC Championship.
In all three playoff games, the defense managed to slow down some of the best offensive weapons in the league. A young, scrappy, tough unit led by their veteran in the middle Chris Jones, showed no mercy and rose to the occasion time and time again when the offense went into a rut.
Mahomes and Kelce proved why they are one of the greatest QB/TE duos in NFL history, as it almost looks like they can read each other's minds. When the city needed them most; they just needed each other. Despite the lack of weapons, the dropped passes, and the low-scoring games, when it mattered most they knew where to find each other (usually about 10-15 yards downfield running some kind of scramble drill).
I don’t think anyone can question that this has been the hardest road the Chiefs have taken in their recent stretch of success. We also know that it doesn’t matter what happens in the regular season, only who’s playing the best when the lights are the brightest, and whose stars will show up. Kansas City’s stars have not only shown up, they’ve shown out.
This is what true dynasties do, they keep winning, no matter the obstacles and circumstances. Kansas City is a dynasty, and they have a chance to cement themselves as one of the most successful stretches in league history with a win over the NFC’s San Francisco 49ers. Reid and Co. will surely come into Sunday locked in and ready to roll, and as we’ve seen in the past, anything can happen in the 60 minutes on the world’s biggest football stage.
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