Kansas City Chiefs 21, Miami Dolphins 14
All season long I’ve been trying to figure out the truth of the 2023 Kansas City Chiefs, how good they are, where they are going, what their ultimate destination will be. And it’s been a confusing journey. The backwardness of having Patrick Mahomes healthy and playing quarterback while simultaneously acknowledging that it’s actually been the defense that is responsible for the team’s current 7-2 record is too stark to avoid; I have been consistent in saying the offense will eventually figure it out, and if they do then this will be the best Chiefs’ team in the Mahomes Era. That remains my position, even though my confidence drops week-by-week.
Ironically enough, it was only when the Chiefs didn’t have a game — during this current Bye Week — that I may have found the most clarity. Is Kansas City capable of winning their third Super Bowl in five years? I don’t think there is any question. As of today (November 13th) they are the betting favorites at +500 to repeat as champions, which makes sense given that both (a) they have the best record in the AFC and thus the best chance to capture the top seed in the AFC, securing them a first round Bye in the postseason/home-field advantage, and (b) this is as wide open of an NFL field as anyone has seen in several years. Both of Kansas City’s previous modern era Super Bowl wins (2019, 2022) featured a first round bye and home-field advantage.
With that said, this does not feel like a championship season. I hope to be wrong, obviously, but at what point does this iteration of the Chiefs, I don’t know, stop caring so much about the prize? I’m not arguing that they don’t, per se. I’m just saying as a human being, as someone who understands motivation, who is driven by competition, who knows what it’s like to have reached certain proverbial mountaintops in my lifetime, who has found many aspects of the ride to be easy, at times, it can be difficult to invent enough imaginary chips on my shoulder to stay fully focused and engaged.
And the Chiefs have done it, goddamn it. They’ve gone to three Super Bowls in four years and they have won two of them. Never forget that the little guy in white with the number 10 on his jersey, in the background in the photo above, was directly one of the biggest reasons the Chiefs beat the 49ers for Mahomes’s first Super Bowl win, and indirectly perhaps the biggest reason they beat the Eagles last year for Mahomes’s second Super Bowl win.
Because once he, Tyreek Hill, that is, got traded to the Miami Dolphins, he did all sorts of badmouthing the Chiefs. The media, both local and national, questioned Mahomes and Andy Reid and Kansas City’s offense and there was so much talk swirling around the greatest quarterback in the world that it lit a fire under the entire organization. The Chiefs last year had a point to prove, to Tyreek Hill, to themselves, and to everyone else. And they did it. Two-time champions, they became.
Contrast that with this year. What out there can possibly motivate a team that has already done it twice? It’s like sleeping with a really beautiful woman and then one day that stops and you are once again a nomad, traveling through the desert alone, and you begin to wonder if maybe that was it. Maybe that was the peak. So you begin to question if that’s all you are made of, if you really were just a one-hit wonder, and you have this certain image of yourself in your head, but it’s not true in reality. Most times you don’t get to choose how the rest of the world thinks about you, or values you. They decide that for you.
But then one day you sleep with another beautiful woman, a second one, and it reminds you and sort of justifies everything that happened with the first. That you are and always have been everything that you thought you were. And it is great to be standing there, alone, on the mountaintop. It’s great to prove to the rest of the world that you are the best. But when the curtains close and it’s just you, still alone, forever, alone, what you come to realize is that it was never about anybody else. It was always about you. Proving it to yourself. That is what matters at the end of every day.
And so that is my major takeaway from this year’s season, which is still at the halfway point of the football year right there for the Chiefs to take. It’s all about motivation. I cannot foresee a second consecutive Super Bowl win for the mere fact that I don’t believe they have a big enough chip on their shoulder. Being 7-2 is great, being on track for the number one seed is a position 16 teams in both conferences vie for. I just don’t think there is a big enough Fuck You to the rest of the sport, day-in day-out, during practice, during games, to do the thing for a third time and really put their stamp, the Chiefs, that is, on the history of the NFL.
I mean, shit, Travis Kelce is flying from fucking Germany where he took part in a 21-14 win over the Dolphins to Argentina to see his girlfriend perform on tour. So I say again: What is football in the grand scheme of things? A goddamn Hall of Fame tight end who will go down as the greatest pass-catcher at his position in the history of the sport is dating the most popular, perhaps most powerful woman on the planet. It really puts the most well-known team in the most well-known American sport in perspective.
This article has nothing to do with believing. Patrick Mahomes taught me a long time ago, like 2018, that the Chiefs are never out of it. Until he came around I never thought I would see my favorite football team win a Super Bowl. Until very recently I thought the same thing about the Texas Rangers, my favorite baseball team. And I know, as a philosophical, intellectual exercise, that I write these words about my favorite teams as sport, as entertainment, as something that moves the chains, so to speak, in my everyday life, knowing that I don’t always get what I want. Asking or blindly hoping for a third championship in five years is nothing short of greedy, something I will never be.
What I do, here, is show some sort of blueprint, or roadmap, of what is to come. I am wrong a lot of the time, and I am also right a lot of the time. The story of the 2023 Kansas City Chiefs, how it will be remembered, I think, is that Travis Kelce was dating Taylor Swift. That isn’t what I, as a Chiefs fan, necessarily want, but the only the way it turns out otherwise, as something else, is if the Chiefs win the Super Bowl. And I just don’t believe that is a practical way to go about life, to expect it.
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