So this is what this feels like...

Everything ends badly, or it wouldn't end. The Chiefs lost both the Super Bowl and their shot at history in disastrous fashion.

This article is unlocked so we can all ponder what just happened together. I also, for the first time ever, did a voiceover of the article for anyone to listen to, as I felt like talking as much as writing. If you like going beyond the box score and reading about the Kansas City Chiefs (and football in general), subscribe for $12 a year by clicking the button below.

As I sat in my chair, watching the seconds tick away in a game I knew the Chiefs couldn’t win, a single thought kept running through my head.

“I forgot what this is like.”

We had a really nice Super Bowl LIX party at the Keysor house. My older sisters and their husbands (all of whom celebrated Super Bowl LIV with us) came over. My mom was there (my dad was off in Montana visiting his own parents, but made sure to text me when the game was well over to say he’s just glad the family got together. He’s good like that), as were some good friends who really wanted to celebrate with us as the Chiefs made history. The food was good, the company better. Then, of course, there was the game.

There will come a time (probably later this week) when I’ll analyze a little bit as to what went wrong for the Chiefs against the Eagles, but the problems were obvious enough that I don’t feel the need to start off talking about them here. I’ll just say that within the first two offensive drives I had a bad feeling about the way the game was going to play out. And you know why. I’m not here to talk about that today.

Today, I’m thinking more about the last three years and how… odd this all was. Since the start of the 2022 season, the Chiefs have been 49-11. They’d won NINE CONSECUTIVE playoff games (an utterly insane stat). Even when they were bad by their standards (much of 2023 and in spurts of 2024), they always seemed to win when it mattered the most. It had been literal years since a season ended with anything but the Chiefs hoisting the Lombardi. Every season ended well, every big game was won, every coach/player stepped up when it was needed the most.

Until Sunday. And I’d genuinely forgotten what that felt like. Watching the minutes tick by towards an inevitable loss (I thought it was over at the DHop drop… but I really KNEW it was over was the first Chiefs drive of the 2nd half, when it became clear they hadn’t solved the protection problems and Mahomes was jumpy) I wasn’t irate. I didn’t shout (for the most part). I barely talked as one thing after another went disastrously wrong. Instead I just sat there, feeling this unfamiliar feeling and thinking about how rare that’s been over the last seven years as a Chiefs fan.

I’m not going to attempt to paint lipstick on a pig. There is no other way to describe the Super Bowl loss as anything but an utter fiasco. The Chiefs were more thoroughly beaten than in any game I’ve ever seen in the Mahomes era, particularly on the offensive side of the ball (frankly, the defense held up as long as one could expect, and maybe a bit longer, given the total lack of support from offense). They were outcoached, out-talented, out-executed, and basically outclassed in every possible way one can be in a football game. It was embarrassing, and led to an inevitable tide of “this will keep Mahomes from ever being the GOAT” tweets from a number of accounts that have been positively ITCHING to have a reason to say such things.

But I didn’t FEEL embarrassed. I just felt… odd.

We were in uncharted territory. Sure, the 2020 Super Bowl had been a blowout, but that was at least somewhat explainable given the Chiefs having basically their entire starting OL out. And Mahomes had played absurdly well despite the box score, making incredible throw after incredible throw (with the majority of them being dropped or misplayed). This was more akin to the 2nd-half meltdown against the Bengals in 2021, where everything that could go wrong, did. But that was still a close game.

This was as though every single Chiefs’ flaw on offense that has concerned us all over the last several years all came out at once. The pass blocking, Mahomes’ pocket presence, the lack of pure WR talent, Kelce slowing down, Reid’s stubbornness (in both protections and play calls)… yes, the offensive line was losing early and often (Joe Thuney at LT and Mike Caliendo at LG were the biggest culprits, but Jawaan Taylor at RT had a rough night too), but it felt like nothing was being done to mitigate it. Where was the quick game? The moving pockets? The play action? The RPOs? The sweeps to slow down pass rushers? None of it made sense as the game grew ever more out of reach.

And that was odd to see. The Chiefs don’t melt down like this in the playoffs when they’re healthy. Not for years. No, this is how they lose some meaningless October game that everyone says is a “wake up call” later on when they’re dominating the playoffs en route to the Super Bowl. This isn’t supposed to happen in January or February. Not to these Chiefs. They don’t make multiple crippling mistakes in the form of drops, penalties, missed throws, and boneheaded errors that extend opponents’ drives and end their own. Not in the playoffs. Except they were.

What an odd feeling.

The Chiefs had a shot at history Sunday. No one had ever made it so close to a threepeat. EVER. And looking at how tough it has been these last few years, you can see why. Roster turnover, coach turnover, injuries, bad luck, other teams building to beat you, getting everyone’s best shot, wear and tear of constantly playing into February… it’s incredibly difficult to even win two in a row. There’s a reason it’s so rarely happened in the history of the league. And it’s more clear than ever why no one has been able to do what the Chiefs were trying to do.

And just like every other team before them, Kansas City fell short. Maybe everything caught up to them. Maybe they really weren’t that good the last two years and the ability of Mahomes, Kelce, Jones, Spags, and Reid to cover for flaws finally reached its limits. Maybe “any given Sunday” is just such a real thing that eventually the bill always comes due. We’ll talk about that at some point soon, I promise.

But for now, I want to focus on how odd failure feels for the Chiefs, and as a Chiefs fan. And what a word for losing (even in spectacular fashion) the Super Bowl; Failure. We’ve reached a point in history where anything short of finishing on top feels hollow. Where the idea of “great season, multiple playoff wins, 15-2, etc” doesn’t add up. It really is all or nothing for the Chiefs. That’s been the level of their greatness during this most recent run as they’ve solidified themselves into a legitimate dynasty. One loss doesn’t change that, no matter how many fans of other teams (or pundits looking to fill airtime) insist that it might.

It also, ugly as it was, doesn’t change how unbelievably fun the last two years have been. There’s been so much to celebrate, and perhaps that’s why this feeling is so odd:

• Watching the Chiefs trade away one of the most dynamic playmakers in the league and somehow get BETTER on offense the next year.

• Watching the 2022 draft show hit after hit of players who were able to not only contribute immediately, but become the sort of players you can build a defense around.

• Seeing Chris Jones, on the heels of Aaron Donald’s retirement, finally (mostly, he still was ignored in DPOY voting this season) get his due as one of the best and most clutch interior pass rushers in history.

• Exorcising the Bengals demons in the AFC Championship.

• Mahomes having one of the best playoff runs ever on a bad ankle.

• Seeing the defense morph from “solid” to “elite” in 2023.

• Watching the Chiefs, after a relatively poor 2023 regular season, march through one of the toughest playoff runs in history (MIA, BUF on the road, BAL on the road, a stacked SF team in the Super Bowl).

• The sheer joy of Mahomes’ perfection in the 2nd half of the Super Bowl and the walkoff TD that let us all say the word “dynasty.”

Let’s be honest… this is leaving out a lot of very, very great moments over the last several years (and some frustrating ones, but I digress). It’s been SO much fun, SO terrific, SO consistently excellent in the biggest moments, that I somehow got caught up in the trap that I swore I never would. I started to take it for granted. I started to assume that it was just always going to be this way. Of course the Chiefs would figure it out and overcome. Of course they’d come back from a big deficit. Of course they would manage to make timely stops in the biggest moments and move the ball when it became absolutely necessary. After all, that’s just what they do. I hadn’t realized it, but I had gone from HOPING for greatness to EXPECTING greatness and then to ASSUMING greatness.

And that’s just not how it works as a sports fan. I mean, it has for Chiefs fans, for several years now. But that sort of thing can’t last forever. It’s too hard to win consistently in the NFL. There’s a reason why the most famous dynasty in NFL history had a ten-year gap between Super Bowl wins at one point. This sport is hard. So much harder than Mahomes and company have made it look on the biggest stage recently. And finally, they played a bad game against a team more than good enough to make them pay for it, and pay dearly. It just so happened to come at the worst time possible.

There’s always next year. What an odd thing to have to say at the end of the season. The next few months are supposed to contain multiple celebratory film reviews and then conversations about how the Chiefs will maintain their stranglehold on the league. Instead, Kansas City is forced to say the exact same thing as 30 other teams in the league about next year. They’ll have to look at how to improve the flaws that finally got the better of them. They’ll have to really start to consider why the offense has been less than stellar the last few years (2024 was better than 2023, but still far below what a Mahomes-led team should look like). And they’ll have to do it all as just another team after being the reigning champs for so long.

I’m disappointed the Chiefs missed their shot at history. Who knows if they’ll ever get another one like it? They’re the first team to even get that far, so it seems unlikely. That’s another odd thing to say, isn’t it? The idea that the Chiefs would accomplish something never done before being… unlikely? When did that word come into play for this team? I’d argue it was around the time the lead stretched to insurmountable as the cameras showed a shocked Chiefs’ sideline sitting silently and staring into space. Suddenly, all the endless possibilities… well, they ended. And the idea of being historic went from being JUST within their grasp to something they’ll have to fight and claw their way towards in the future.

It all really is so odd.

So now what? Well, I’ve looked at prior articles I wrote so long ago when the Chiefs last fell short, and I guess the next step now will be to think long and hard about the gaps in the roster and/or coaching that led them to where they’re at. And we’ll do that here, probably multiple times, starting with looking at the hubris (I don’t have another word for it) that led to some of the problems Sunday against the Eagles. Then we’ll move into free agency, the draft, offseason film reviews, and all the “there’s always next year” stuff.

But before I do that, I wanted to let this feeling have it’s moment. Because for as bad as this feeling is, I think there’s something to be said for how out of place it feels. That’s a sign that something really special has been happening the last few seasons. Sports are generally full of excitement that gets ended by disappointment. But for 738 days, that wasn’t the life you and I lived as Chiefs fans. For 738 days, anything was possible. And not just possible, but seemingly inevitable.

And for what it’s worth I think that makes the oddness of all this worth celebrating. We’re not used to this anymore. Being a Chiefs fan doesn’t mean the same thing it meant prior to 2019. It used to be that disappointment and heartbreak in the biggest moments was the expectation.

Now? Now it’s just odd.

And even on the worst of days, that makes it still a great day to be a Chiefs fan.

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