New Orleans
CNN
—
Trailing by one point with 12 minutes to go in the AFC Championship game, the Kansas City Chiefs’ quest for a historic three straight Super Bowl championships was being put to a stern test.
One play changed the direction of the game and exemplified the culture that has built the Chiefs into the NFL’s latest – and potentially greatest – dynasty.
Quarterback Patrick Mahomes lined up in the shotgun formation with running back Kareem Hunt behind him and tight ends Travis Kelce and Noah Gray on either side. The all-world QB faked a handoff to Hunt, deciding to keep the ball on the read option based on how the Buffalo Bills’ defense attacked the play.
Gray and Kelce both flew out of the backfield, colliding with Bills defensive backs and driving them backward. Wide receiver Xavier Worthy broke off the route he was running and engaged a third defender. And Mahomes, the three-time Super Bowl MVP, who is already one of the most successful quarterbacks to ever play the game before his 30th birthday, lowered his shoulders, shaking off three Bills defenders inside the five-yard line to punch the ball in for the go-ahead score.
The Chiefs would never give up the lead again. The combination of Mahomes magic in the fourth quarter, the dogged blocking of Kelce and Gray and the all-for-one-and-one-for-all effort from Worthy and the rest of his teammates exemplified just why Kansas City is back in the Super Bowl for the fifth time in seven years and looking to make history.
“It’s a championship culture. I mean, it’s really not that complicated, honestly, it’s just a championship culture here,” said wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins, a 12-year NFL veteran who was traded to the team in the middle of the season.
The tone set by head coach Andy Reid and enforced by locker room leaders like Mahomes, Kelce and defensive tackle Chris Jones has made the Super Bowl the standard in Kansas City. There’s a calmness about the team that’s been cultivated through multiple seasons that have lasted into February for the better part of a decade. They expect to be here, they expect to win, they expect to end their seasons covered in confetti.
And boy, are NFL fans sick of seeing them in this position.
Every Sunday, social media is full of excuses for the Chiefs’ success: The referees are helping them with big calls in their favor at clutch moments; Mahomes draws penalties in an unfair way; the NFL is fixing the games to get Kelce’s girlfriend Taylor Swift on TV to spike ratings, and more.
The reality of the situation is simple. It’s about culture.
“It starts with Coach Reid and the culture that he’s built,” Mahomes said. “But I think through this entire team, you have a lot of guys that love the process of starting from the bottom and having to build your way back up there. And we understand what it takes to get to this role, and we know it’s not easy.”
“And so instead of just trying to go out there and go through the motions, guys know that they have to put this work in to get to this position. … I think the team has a lot of guys that want to do what it takes to win.”
And all that online chatter, all those detractors who keep moaning about the Chiefs playing in the biggest games of the year every year? It just brings them even closer together.
“We’re not bad guys,” Reid said. “You know, that’s the first thing, but this happens sometimes when you win a lot of games for a number of years. You take on that role. But that’s not this team. But it has a tendency to bring you together, for sure.”
The sense one gets from speaking to the Chiefs about their organization is that the things they do to win games don’t just happen on the field in the fall and winter. The habits that lead to winning start in the spring and build – week after week, month after month, year after year.
On a team like this, with so many weapons and so many talented players, there is no room for ego.
“I think it’s genuine love,” said Trent McDuffie, one of the team’s cornerbacks. “You know, everybody around here truly wants to see each other be successful. There’s no bad person in the room that is trying to bring it down. Whether you’re playing, not playing, whatever it is – everybody’s trying to get to a goal and everybody’s working for it.”
Mahomes, Kelce and Jones might set the bar for their teammates but it is clear that the Chiefs are full of players who are ready to climb the heights necessary to meet that standard. That complete buy-in breeds a sense of togetherness and brotherhood that multiple players said is unique in the professional game.
“The atmosphere was different when I first showed up here,” said Marquise “Hollywood” Brown, who’s in his first season on the Chiefs. “I realized it gives me, like, a college feel. It’s hard to get a group of guys and have it be like a family like how it is here. I feel like that’s the key to winning.”
Kareem Hunt, in his second stint with the Chiefs after spending the first two seasons of his career in Kansas City, said it’s easy to see the difference between his once-and-current team and other teams in the league.
“Honestly … we play for one another and then the way we work in practice, and everything is just so – it’s way harder than the game,” he said.
But that feel-good, positive atmosphere is also backed by the steel and credibility of leaders who have done it all and expect their teammates to live up to the level they expect. One of the hallmarks of any successful team is when the players enforce their own rules instead of relying on coaches to do it for them.
And this team is almost uniquely led by its players.
“Accountability is a huge thing. You know, being accountable, being able to be called out, being able to recognize when you’re not holding yourself to the standard of the team and adjusting,” Jones said. “We have a lot of good guys in this organization, guys who want to win, guys who have the same goal and morals, so the accountability part is kind of easy because everybody is on the same page.”
Over the years, the Chiefs have played some scintillating football. This year, the product on the field hasn’t exactly been as pretty but it’s led to the best record in team history.
It’s an old cliché, but clichés are true for a reason: Some teams just know how to win. And this edition of the Kansas City Chiefs is full of winners.
“I know how blessed I am to be in this organization, on this football team. … it’s a culture that’s been set by Coach Reid and throughout the whole organization. It’s about winning,” Mahomes said. “Doesn’t matter how it’s done. It’s about coming to work every single day and leaving it all on the football field and winning football games. And I think that’s what’s kind of made us so successful these last few years.”
Those years of success have bred a confidence among the Chiefs that they are never out of any game that they play in, no matter the score.
That comes from Reid, according to Kelce, and it’s led an almost unnatural level of calm across the team.
The bright lights of Super Bowl week feel a lot less bright after being in front of them each of the last two seasons. The whirlwind of media appearances, practices, team meetings and everything else that comes with it doesn’t feel nearly as fast when it is part of the routine for an organization.
It’s hard to imagine a moment ever being too big for the Chiefs, on or off the field.
“There’s a calmness, you know,” McDuffie said. “I think everybody right now understands everything we’re doing, it comes with the territory, and it’s all about how you handle it. There could be guys that could be upset that you have come here at 8 a.m. and have to talk for an hour instead of working on their body and doing football, but I think everybody is handling it really the right way, taking it in, living in the moment. When it comes time to football, everybody locks in.”
One might think it’s hard to find motivation after reaching the top of your profession multiple times in quick succession. For players like Kelce who have three rings now, the biggest motivation comes not from putting a fourth ring on his fingers but a first on his teammates.
“Obviously, what we’ve done over the course of three years is fun, man, but this team is more special than any team I’ve ever been on,” Kelce said this week. “We have a lot of unique individuals, a lot of guys that haven’t tasted the mountain top yet and I want it for them just as bad as I want it for myself. “
Players like Hopkins, who is on his fourth team, appreciate what that camaraderie brings. The Chiefs might not have the latest and greatest practice facility set up, but it doesn’t matter when the wins keep racking up.
“It’s the best locker room situation I’ve been in. They win championships,” he said. “And, I guess you could say maybe they might not have the newest facilities and locker rooms and things of that nature. But I think that’s what makes them the Chiefs, you know? It’s about how you go out there and perform, and not what your locker room looks like.”
Hopkins believes this Chiefs team has the chance to be known as one of the best teams in history. Finishing off the three-peat would set the Chiefs organization apart from all other NFL franchises in the history books, pulling off a feat that not even the heralded teams from the San Francisco 49ers, Dallas Cowboys, New England Patriots or Pittsburgh Steelers could do.
They’d have to look to other sports for peers. The Chicago Bulls of the 1990s. The New York Yankees from the late 1990s and early 2000s. The Los Angeles Lakers from the early 2000s. The Edmonton Oilers from the 1980s. The Montreal Canadiens from the 1970s. The Oakland A’s from that same decade. The late 1990s Houston Comets.
Hopkins is letting himself think of joining that group, but most of the Chiefs said they’re just enjoying the ride and focused on winning on Sunday. Much like that play in Arrowhead that helped win them this trip to New Orleans, it’s all very Chiefs.
“It’s such a special time in Chiefs history and this legacy is just, it’s so fun to be a part of because of the people that we have here,” Kelce said. “And I’m just trying to cherish all these memories and make the most out of all these opportunities that we have, chasing these rings.”
