Chiefs gird up for the hardest triple play
Despite a turbulent off-season, Kansas City still has Patrick Mahomes to seek a third consecutive title.
Rashee Rice, their bright hope as a second-year receiver, celebrated the off-season by proving his Lamborghini could go 100 mph. It came to a screeching halt, literally, when it crashed into several other cars in Dallas (what is it with Dallas athletes and unsafe speed?). Rice fled the scene and was later dinged with eight charges, including six for causing injury.
Harrison Butker, their unerring kicker, riled up part of the fanbase and inspired another part with a commencement address at Benedictine College. He said American women had been told “deceitful lies” about their roles in the world and said his wife Isabelle “would be the first to say that her life truly started when she started living her vocation as a wife and as a mother.” He also criticized “a deadly sin sort of pride that has a month dedicated to it.” Gee, wonder what he meant by that?
Despite two parades in two seasons, they watched 58 percent of their county’s voters reject a sales tax proposal that would provide $300 million worth of stadium renovations, along with a new baseball stadium. Then they watched the county’s commissioners refuse to even put another tax measure on the ballot that would deal with football only.
Then they lost ace cornerback L’Jarius Snead through free agency, to Tennessee.
All in all, maybe not the firmest springboard for the Kansas City Chiefs to pursue what would be a towering piece of football history.
But Andy Reid is back, and so is Patrick Mahomes, and Chris Jones has reupped with his own luxurious contract, and the Chiefs plan to show up for all 17 games, the first of which is Thursday night, against Baltimore, in the city that loves their merchandise but won’t write them a blank check.
The Chiefs have won the past two Super Bowls. No NFL team has won three in succession, even though you hear the “dynasty” word thrown around like a holding flag.
Go into the Wayback Machine, and no team has pulled an NFL three-peat since the Green Bay Packers of 1965 through 1967. The first Super Bowl followed the 1966 season. The ‘65 Packers beat Cleveland in the NFL title game, and the ‘67 team won the Ice Bowl, with Bart Starr diving into the frozen end zone to beat Dallas. After that, a second Super Bowl win, this one over Oakland in Miami, was no sweat, except for the sweat.
Before that, the last team to win three consecutive NFL championships was the 1929-31 Packers. That team played at City Stadium and was coached by Curly Lambeau, for whom the current stadium is named. Those Packers were led by John McNally, who, while at Notre Dame, was hoping to play pro football name under an assumed name to stay eligible. McNally and a friend, Ralph Hanson, passed a theater that was showing “Blood And Sand” with Rudolph Valentino. “That’s it,” McNally said. “I’ll be Blood, you be Sand.” From then on he was Johnny Blood, and eventually made the Hall of Fame, although he overcame his habit of perching on hotel ledges and crawling atop railroad cars to get there.
However, the Cleveland Browns lay claim to true dynastic blood. They won the last four championships of the All-American Football Conference. The league ceased operation after the 1949 season, and the Browns, Baltimore Colts and San Francisco 49ers were absorbed into the NFL. Much like the AFL’s New York Jets a generation later, the Browns were widely doubted, even though they had quarterback Otto Graham, running back Marion Motley, and receivers Dante Lavelli and Mac Speedie. The Browns dispelled all that by thumping the Eagles in the season opener, and later won the NFL championship, 30-28, over the Rams. That’s five in a row. Coach/owner Paul Brown said it was his finest moment in the game.
Few sports are as unfriendly to tyranny as pro football. One pop in a quarterback’s knee, one borderline pass interference call, one wayward kick in the wind, one contract too fat to fit underneath the hard cap, and a whole season collapses. The Chiefs have to deal with a rutted road in the AFC. Two Super Bowls ago they beat Philadelphia on Butker’s field goal after a defensive holding call. Last year they were outplayed for most of three quarters by San Francisco and won on Mecole Hardman’s touchdown with :03 left, another 3-point victory.
The Chiefs were 9-6 last year after a sloppy showing at Las Vegas. They were not assured of even cracking the tournament. Then they beat Cincinnati and the Chargers, went on the road for the first time since Mahomes introduced himself to the playoffs after they beat Miami, and emerged from trips to Buffalo and Baltimore, the familiar feeling building with each air mile. Neither of the past two Chiefs teams have had Tyreek Hill, football’s fastest man and $120 million wide receiver, and their run game has been carried by righteous seventh-round draft pick Isiah Pacheco. They don’t scare anyone, but, thanks to a young, energetic defense coordinated by Steve Spagnuolo and sharpened by defensive backs coach David Merritt, they keep the Chiefs in the fight long enough for Mahomes, the one-man cavalry, to ride in. You may have missed all this, with the cameras trained on the suite level and the Taylor Swift entourage. Little did she know, two years ago, that the most important of her Eras would belong to the Chiefs.
Kansas City traded up 17 spots to get Mahomes in 2017. It knew it was getting a otherworldly arm that never won more than seven games with Kliff Kinsgbury at Texas Tech. But did Reid know Mahomes’ brain and gristle would be just as instrumental? Mahomes has run for playoff-game-clinching first downs on a twisted ankle, and he has gotten Kansas City in position for AFC championship wins in 13 seconds’ time. While other quarterbacks fatten their endorsements, Mahomes does State Farm commercials with his coach and tight end, but mainly he gathers his receivers in Dallas every spring, lines them up, throws them hundreds of footballs, and establishes rapport and timing. By all accounts he is a Hall of Fame teammate.
The Chiefs have mined the draft up and down the line. Nick Bolton is a blossoming star at linebacker, a second-rounder from Missouri. Creed Humphrey is the same at center, a second-rounder from Oklahoma. That defense has only two first-round starters, but they are Jones, an elite defensive tackle, and cornerback Trent McDuffie, who in two years has set his own standard. Jones just turned 30, but he’s the old man of this defense.
This year the Chiefs went for speed, on two legs and not necessarily four wheels, by taking Xavier Worthy in the first round, after Worthy set a 40-yard record at the NFL combine (4.21). If he can make safeties back up a bit, there might be even more room for Travis Kelce, the 12th-year, third-round pick who might yet be remembered as the best pass-catching tight end Canton has enshrined, and certainly the richest podcaster.
More celebrated two-time Super Bowl winners have fallen short. All of them, in fact. The Steel Curtain from Pittsburgh went back-to-back twice but no further. The Dolphins made a run for a third but were waylaid by Oakland’s Ken Stabler and Clarence Davis. The Patriots tried it and lost a Divisional Playoff to Denver. The Broncos might have done it, but John Elway retired. The Cowboys might have done it, but they ran into the law of averages against San Francisco. The Packers won those first two Super Bowls, and then Vince Lombardi kicked himself upstairs.
The 1962 Houston Oilers, or at least those who have survived, must still be shuddering over how close they came. They played the Dallas Texans in the AFL Championship, and George Blanda lined up a 42-yard field goal to wrap up the third consecutive title. But Dave Grayson blocked it to force overtime. After he won the coin toss, the Texans’ Abner Haynes told the referee, “We’ll kick to the clock,” which inadvertently gave Houston the ball and the wind. That overtime was scoreless, and Tommy Brooker’s field goal won it in the second overtime, 20-17.
That was the final game for the Texans. When they were next seen in 1963, they were the Kansas City Chiefs.
Great read!