Being a Chiefs fan is the best... and gameday is somehow the worst.
I've got to process the stress that is gameday. Let's talk about being a fan of the 2024 Chiefs.
My dog Kiko is a terrific dog.
She’s smart, a great-looking dog, protective of the home but not annoying about it, gets after squirrels and other rodents, plays with the kids well, and checks every box you’d want. She’s as loyal as they come, too, especially to my wife. Here she is in her morning routine of waiting for Jas to come out of the bathroom… again, she’s a great dog!
She also has one weird quirk, though, as smart as she is. When we’re on a walk and she goes off-trail, and I eventually call her back… she will, without fail, find the absolute hardest path back to where I am. She could have a straight flat shot right to me but would instead sprint up a 90 degree hill through thick brush barely missing a tree and somehow ducking through a fence that is a thousand years old in the middle of nowhere while jumping over a gigantic hole. She gets back to me every single time, and fast, but constantly makes her life as hard as humanly (doggedly?) possible. She’s even gotten a little scratched up a few times when she could’ve just, you know, walked back to me rather than careening through every possible obstacle.
Anyways, I want to talk about what it’s like to be a fan of the Kansas City Chiefs in the year 2024.
I mean, what else could we have possibly expected? The Chiefs have filled a BINGO card with “exciting” (stressful, heart-stopping, psychotic, improbable to the point of impossible) ways to win games in 2024. We’ve seen every form of win to the point that a last-second field goal would somehow seem normal to the point of being boring. No matter how good or bad the opponent, Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs will find some way to make the game come as excruciatingly close to a loss as possible… before somehow winning.
What hadn’t they done yet? A doinked kick as a game winner. And so, of course…
I stopped that clip where I did on purpose. Because for a horrifying, terrible, eternity-lasting moment it was impossible to tell if that ball “doinked” on the right side of the goal post or the wrong side (though I suppose which side is which is a matter of perspective). And that’s an oddly perfect analogy for this team.
The Chiefs checked another box in the “they can’t keep getting away with this” checklist Sunday night, with their THIRD KICKER OF THE YEAR Matthew Wright managing to doink the football off the left upright on what should have been a perfectly easy, stress-free kick. But that’s not how the 2024 Kansas City Chiefs do things.
I want to write about what it’s like being a Chiefs fan in 2024. Not even an analyst or whatever it is I do. But a fan. It has been the most unique experience of my entire life as a fan, and it’s worth talking about it. Because each game might just be one of the most legitimately horrible experience imaginable within the framework of somehow… not being horrible? And even more horribly, you can’t complain about how horrible it is because…
This is where I’m obligated to note that the Chiefs are 12-1 (TWELVE AND ONE), an incredible record. They just clinched the AFC West for the 9th season in a row, the second longest such run in NFL history. They’re two full games up on the 1-seed in the AFC (with Buffalo stumbling against the Rams to fall to 10-3, a record shared by the Steelers). And they are the back-to-back Super Bowl Champions who also happened to win it all just a few years before that and are currently, like, a dynasty.
Because of all that context (and it’s a LOT of context), any negativity talking about or covering the team can be perceived a certain way. There’s a lot to be thankful for as a Chiefs fan, more than any other fanbase in any other sport in the world right now. I’ll come back to all that, I promise, and the greatness of Mahomes and Kelce in the biggest moment will be looked at this week. Make no mistake, we should appreciate every moment of this. We really should.
But seriously, it’s time to talk about how unbelievably not fun the gameday experience has been as a Chiefs fan in 2024 (until the clock hits zero, when it becomes fun). Let’s commiserate over that together, even as we celebrate yet another division title.
Because holy crap, these games have not been fun.