Another NFL season is about to come to a close and once again, the Kansas City Chiefs have reached the Super Bowl. It’s a sight that few outside the Midwest will enjoy.

Kansas City has been to the Super Bowl five times in the last six seasons – including this one, when they’ll take on the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LIX.

In that time they’ve gone from exciting and plucky up-and-comers in Super Bowl LIV all the way to now – when they’re widely seen as the villains of the league.

It could be simply that their success has brought them this notoriety – and largely, that’s the case.

But there’s plenty more narratives surrounding this team that fans of the sport just do not like.

From the referees to the media, fans have been hating the Chiefs for years now as they’ve taken the mantle of ‘most hated’ from the New England Patriots.

After winning back-to-back Super Bowl titles, the Chiefs are more hated now than ever before

In a sense, what made the Patriots hated was more than their success through the course of 19 seasons.

Not only did the media praise Brady and Belichick at every turn, there was also accusations of the referees being on their side with favorable calls (see: The Tuck Rule, Jesse James’ overturned TD catch in 2017).

Sound familiar? This season, the narrative of the Chiefs being beneficiaries of favorable calls has taken on a life of its own to the point where nearly any penalty flag on the opposing team generates social media scorn.

A perfect example came in Sunday’s AFC Championship game – when tight end Travis Kelce got in the face of Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin and mocked him. When one of Hamlin’s teammates came over to confront Kelce and headbutted him, the Bills player was flagged. Kelce was not. 

Add to that the tons of praise heaped upon quarterback Patrick Mahomes by multiple members of the media who cover Chiefs games (Cris Collinsworth and Tony Romo may be the biggest examples of this) and fans are tired of Kansas City.

The one defining difference between the Chiefs and the Patriots isn’t necessarily that New England has won more titles. It’s that in the eyes of many people outside the six states in the Northeast, the Patriots were seen as the sport’s biggest cheats in that time period.

From ‘Spygate’ to ‘Deflategate’, the Patriots weren’t without criticism and scandals and were duly punished by the league. 

Kansas City doesn’t have any similar scandals, which might be its one mark in favor of being a less ‘evil’ franchise than the Patriots.

The Chiefs took the ‘villain’ mantle from the New England Patriots of the Belichick-Brady era

But one thing the Chiefs don’t have are the scandals that took place within New England

But nevertheless, in the moment, the Chiefs are the biggest bullies on the playground and many are hoping to see their downfall soon.

Much like the dynasty-era Patriots, the Chiefs’ players are embracing the identity of being the league’s villains.

‘I love it. I love it,’ tight end Travis Kelce said on the ‘New Heights’ podcast. 

‘At one point in time, it wasn’t that. … I was the ‘do you feel bad for ’em guys.’ … I’m enjoying doing this with the guys together. The guys that we have in there because it just makes us even more of a family.

‘You just circle the wagons. … People are saying whatever they want. You just band together and it makes you appreciate more of what you have because people want what you have.’

Mahomes put it more simply during media availability for Super Bowl LVIII: ‘I just like winning. If you win a lot and that causes you to be the villain, I’m okay with it.’

Two seasons ago, around the time where the Chiefs were starting to be truly hated league-wide, Mahomes was asked about the comparisons between Kansas City and New England.

‘I can definitely sense it. I never felt like that because I’ve never been like that in my entire life. But it’s become a little bit funny,’ Mahomes told ESPN’s Jeff Darlington.

Travis Kelce has embraced his villain role, saying, ‘I’m enjoying doing this with the guys’

Patrick Mahomes put it bluntly at a press conference before last season’s Super Bowl: ‘If you win a lot and that causes you to be the villain, I’m okay with it’

‘I don’t want to say you enjoy it. I know the Patriots had that for a while. I’m hoping we do it in a different way with a little bit more fun and personality with it.

‘But as long as you keep winning, teams start to not like you, and I want to keep winning. So if that means some of the other teams and other fan bases aren’t going to like me, I’ll try to still have a smile on my face and not be a bad example, but I can be that villain for them if they need me to be.’

For now, the Chiefs are definitively the villains of the league – so much so, that many detractors are turning to the Philadelphia Eagles for hope that they might deliver some form of ‘justice’ with a victory in the Big Game.

Come next Sunday, the Chiefs will be trying to do something no other NFL team has done: win three consecutive championships.

If they pull it off, they’ll only further cement themselves as the biggest boogeymen of the 2020’s. If not, then many will revel in their defeat and celebrate that the league’s biggest bad guys finally fell.