The Kansas City Chiefs have a chance to be the NFL’s greatest ever dynasty. They want you to know they’re not bad guys 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. ...................
https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/08/sport/kansas-city-chiefs-nfl-dynasty-spt/index.html
