Photo: Todd Rosenberg/Getty Images
As I watched the Kansas City Chiefs clinch their third consecutive Super Bowl berth last weekend — their fifth of the Patrick Mahomes era — the immortal words of Howard Beale, the beleaguered anchorman of the 1976 film Network, echoed loudly: “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore.” Beale, of course, was decrying any number of social and political ills, from inflation and violent crime to air pollution and an oil embargo. But the sustained dominance of the Chiefs, who’ll attempt to become the first team in NFL history to win three straight Super Bowls next weekend, is at least as troubling.
I do not pretend to be impartial on this or any matter having to do with football. It was the Chiefs, after all, who waltzed into my hometown of Baltimore one year ago and beat the Ravens in the AFC Championship Game, spoiling a season where we seemed primed to unseat them once and for all. But don’t take it from me. Everyone outside of Kansas City hates the Chiefs — even Lil Wayne, who wrote in an X post, “I hate the cheating azz chiefs,” moments after they defeated the Buffalo Bills, another perennial also-ran, on Sunday night.
Now, the notion that the Chiefs are cheaters is specious at best — NFL officiating is generally woeful, and the data shows that referees have helped them no more or less than they have any other team. But facts are powerless to blunt the force of blind hatred. So the idea that the most profitable sports league in America is actually rigged — that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell will not rest until Travis Kelce proposes to Taylor Swift on the field as red confetti rains, further consolidating the NFL’s ironclad grip on the American imagination — has gained a toehold among disgruntled fans, who turn to conspiracy to make sense of the fact that one team keeps winning in a league designed to engineer parity.
In reality, the Chiefs are something worse than cheaters: They are boring and swagless, smug and exasperating. If the early stage of their now six-year-long imperial era was characterized by high-octane offense, they’ve managed to sustain it more recently by winning ugly, in tedious one-score games where they simply make fewer mistakes than their opponents. Until last weekend, they hadn’t scored more than 30 points in a game yet this season. And while I’ll concede the football genius of head coach Andy Reid and defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, who dialed up a characteristically exotic blitz on the biggest play of the game to sink Josh Allen and the Bills, I can’t say the Chiefs are any fun to watch — or to watch win — constantly. We’ve reached a saturation point.
Before the Chiefs, we had the New England Patriots, a dynasty that cast an even longer shadow, at least as things stand now. We hated them too, of course, but their reign was glamorous and strained, like that of an empire perpetually on the verge of collapse. With owner Robert Kraft, who butted heads with head coach Bill Belichick, who himself butted heads with quarterback Tom Brady, the Patriots had a more legibly contemptible cast of characters, defying interpersonal conflict while maintaining an air of malevolence. The Chiefs, meanwhile, are corny and overexposed. They embrace their role as the league’s spoilers but in name only. Really, they want to be liked and make podcasts, shill for car insurance companies and clap back at their haters with Kermit the Frog memes. These are not the villainous winners of yesteryear, who succeeded with the proper levels of tact, arrogance, and magistery. These are the villains of TikTok, metastasizing on our feeds and bearing children with strange names. If they were holding you in captivity, you might just beg to be killed.
Nevertheless, we’re alive to see them compete for another Super Bowl next weekend against the Philadelphia Eagles, who earn my support for being part of the larger avian mascot family and not being the Kansas City Chiefs. They have a good shot to win, so long as they can stave off the black magic. If they do, the mostly good people of Philadelphia will flood the streets and scale the lamp posts, straining the city’s police force for 48 hours and restoring the delicate balance upon which the health of our beloved National Football League depends. If they don’t, it will be another long offseason; State Farm will introduce an insurance bundle called the “three-peat” and Brittany Mahomes will join forces with Melania Trump to end bullying. So the choice, my fellow Americans, is clear: Go, Birds.
