The five stages of 2023 Chiefs fandom

Let's work towards acceptance of who Kansas City is (a team with a puncher's chance), and who they aren't (a great team).

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I wasn’t mad on Sunday night as I left Arrowhead Stadium. No, seriously, I wasn’t.

Sure, the Chiefs had just lost a(nother) frustrating close game, this time falling by a field goal to a desperate Bills team fighting to stay in the playoff picture. Sure, the Chiefs had basically tanked their chance at the 1-seed in the playoffs and even (gulp) put themselves in some jeopardy of missing the playoffs entirely if they aren’t careful. Sure, three of the last four games have been losses that should have been wins. And sure, once again self-inflicted errors killed what should have been a win. All of those things are quite frustrating. Maddening, even.

And yet, I was in a pretty good mood as I walked out of Arrowhead and drove back to the great white north. Maybe it was because I’d just had yet another fantastic weekend of friends and food (shout out to Meat Mitch, which sent me into a meat-induced food coma Saturday night). Maybe it was because the most beautiful woman in the universe was on my arm as we enjoyed a kidless vacation (love you, kiddos, I swear!). Or maybe it was because I had finally reached a healthy place with the 2023 Chiefs.

Here, check out a fun back shoulder throw and catch from Mahomes to Rice before I say something that we need to work through.

All right, ready?

They’re just not THAT good this season. They’re fine. They’re a good team. They’ve got potential to maybe make a run if things break in their favor. But they’re not what they’ve been for the last half-decade.

Let that marinate for a second. Swirl it around in your brain. Allow it to sink in. Then let your expectations change accordingly. And watch that stress and/or exasperation just… melt away.

It’s been a tough journey to get here for me. I’ve fought it this entire season. But the reality is that winning consistently in the NFL is one of the very hardest things to do in sports. There’s so much parity, the sample sizes are so small, the margin for error so thing, that the exception rather than the norm is for teams to be “good” for long periods of time. Not dominant. Not incredible. Just being “good” for any stretch longer than a few years is genuinely tough. Even the legendary Patriots dynasty, which is unlike anything in NFL history, featured just as many seasons of “good but not great” teams as it did Super Bowl champs.

The problem for Chiefs fans is that those rules haven’t applied to them since 2018. Similar to how the Chiefs are learning what it’s like to play by the same rules as the rest of the league in terms of hauling themselves out of bad spots, their fans are experiencing something brand new… at least, brand new for the Patric Mahomes era. And that’s making people feel similar to how Mahomes felt Sunday evening. Because the new normal is… well, it doesn’t feel normal.

Like any big change or traumatic experience (well… “traumatic” is a relative term, but you know what I mean), it’s only reasonable to expect people to experience grief.

And so, since I’ve now processed and dealt with the 2023 Chiefs season in a way that has made me a happier, healthier fan, it is my sacred duty to help all of you (if you so desire) reach the same place. So let’s talk about the 5 stages of accepting the truth about the 2023 Chiefs.

Stage 1: Denial

This is the stage that lasted the longest for me. And I think that’s understandable. After all, this is PATRICK MAHOMES and ANDY REID and TRAVIS KELCE we’re talking about here. How could an offense every actually be average, let alone… kinda bad? It felt legitimately impossible. Nevermind that pretty much every great QB in history has had ebbs and flows, this is Mahomes. None of the normal rules apply to him. That’s why we’ve watched them hoist Lombardi Trophies with and without Tyreek Hill, and be in at least the AFC Championship every single year.

And so, I tried to explain away what my lying eyes were telling me. It’s just self-inflicted errors, I’d say. They’ve been like this forever. They’ll sort it out. They always do, after all. And so the drops will stop. The route combinations will clean up. The sight adjustments will improve. The overall cleanliness of the offense and its execution will just… be better. And then the overwhelming talent of Mahomes and Kelce will take over just like it always has.

But we’re past Week 14 now. We’re well past the “get right” moments of disappointing losses, bye weeks, and more disappointing losses. This is who they are until they show us otherwise, as unbelievable as it sounds. They are, quite frankly, much closer to the Alex-Smith led offenses of the early Reid Chiefs era than they are to the other offenses in the Mahomes era.

This is who they are. The shooting themselves in the foot, the mental errors, the inability outside of a Mahomes/Kelce miracle or the occasional play from Rice or Pacheco to make up for those errors… We’ve seen a 13-game sample size, nearly an entire NFL season. This is who the 2023 Kansas City Chiefs are on offense. The time for denial is ended.

Here’s a clip of Chris Jones being a monster (and Karlaftis having his typical never-ending motor) to help ease this moment for you.

Stage 2: Anger

The worst part of ceasing denial is that it forces one to face the reality of a bad situation. And facing the reality of the 2023 Chiefs offense is indeed (relative to recent years) unpleasant. A merely “decent” or “good” team and not a great one is not as fun to cheer for at times. And what do all healthy, adult people do when they have to face an unpleasant truth? Well, getting sad is a bummer, so we get mad.

(By the way, this is NOT a healthy way to handle emotions, but alas)

And so the lashing out begins and spreads in all directions. The wide receiver room (and Toney, Moore, MVS in particular). The offensive line (and Jawaan Taylor in particular). The coaching staff (Andy Reid and Connor Embree in particular). Brett Veach. Other Chiefs fans. Opposing fanbases. The refs. The league. This stupid sport for making us care so much. Maybe our coworkers. Whomever.

How dare Brett Veach give Mahomes this WR room? How did he not see this coming? How could they justify giving Taylor $20 million per year but not bringing in a solid veteran receiver for a little more than half that number? How did they possibly think Toney and Moore would take that big a step forward, and not at least wonder about what would happen if MVS took a step back? What were they thinking? Why can’t the receivers just LINE UP RIGHT AND RUN THE RIGHT ROUTE? And why can’t Andy see the adjustments that need to be made? And so on, and so forth.

Frankly, a lot of these questions (and the anger associated with them) may be justified. Actually, these are the things making me pretty angry when I think about them.

If you’re not stuck in denial, you’re probably stuck in this phase. And it’s maybe the toughest one to beat. Here’s how I did it… I just acknowledged a few things. The fact that Veach (reportedly) did try to trade up and address the WR room, and wasn’t able to make it work. That scouting and development projection is extremely tough in the league, and sometimes you just fail. That the successes have vastly outweighed the failures, and me being angry about the biggest whiff of the Veach era outside maybe that first draft wasn’t actually accomplishing anything other than making me crazy while I watched games and/or wrote about them.

I don’t like being angry. It’s not why I watch this game or analyze it. And as much as the ol’ “I knew it” anger might be momentarily cathartic, in the end it was robbing me of the fun that still comes even in frustrating seasons.

And so the tough thing comes, letting the anger go (while not dropping any of the facts that lead to said anger) and letting the sadness of a season that hasn’t been what we’d hoped do its thing. And as hard as I fought that sadness, it sure had a lot less of a shelf life than anger. And that’s all it took. Just being a little sad, for a little bit (we’ll circle back to this). And the anger was gone. Seriously, it was!

Stage 3: Bargaining

You know, if Reid would just shift to a more power run-centered approach… if the snap allocation in the WR room were to be shifted… if Rashee Rice were made a primary focus of the offense… if they utilized more under center looks and play action into boots… if MVS would just return to even his 2022 form… if Moore or Toney or James or Watson would step up just a bit… if Jawaan Taylor found his form in pass protection from previous seasons… if the defense were just a LITTLE better at creating turnovers or getting faster pressure… if Mahomes flips that switch to demigod mode… if (earlier in the season) they’d just trade for player X…

Yes, there are things the Chiefs can (and are) doing to try and compensate for their struggles on offense. And honestly, some of them are working enough to help them move the ball pretty well overall. So sure, there’s a chance those things move the needle just enough to make the offense more than it has been. Anything can happen. But one should be cautious about thinking that it WILL change an offense that, again, is what it’s shown itself to be.

You know what bargaining is? Another form of denial. A belief that the bad thing we’ve realized is true can somehow be shifted, altered, or flipped if we do things just so.

Yes, the Chiefs have steps they can take to make their offense more efficient, and I’m sure they’ll keep tinkering. But again, they are who they are, and the biggest issues with the offense (lack of explosive plays, drive-killing mistakes like drops, penalties, alignment and route mistakes, etc) aren’t ones that can be schemed aside or hidden consistently. This is especially true against the better teams in the league. So thinking they can do the football version of talking their way out of a bad situation is, again, another form of denial that will just drag you right back to anger if it doesn’t happen.

This is who the 2023 Chiefs are. Good, and very flawed on offense in ways that can’t be glossed over and rob them of consistency. And nothing they do to rearrange the chairs will change that.

Stage 4: Depression

Here’s a picture Jas took of me after MVS’s drop against the Eagles (that I was not aware she was going to do so, but it captured the moment nicely. Pardon the mess.

Please believe me when I tell you I’m familiar with sports depression.

And that’s the problem with letting denial, anger, and bargaining go. Because then, the sadness creeps in. And as a sports fan, that is a BUMMER. Feeling like the Chiefs are “wasting” a season of Mahomes’ prime and one of the last years (I’d assume) of Kelce being a dominant force is a legitimately sad thing in terms of fanhood. And that sadness could be paralyzing.

But the thing is, that sadness doesn’t have to last. Because once we’ve accepted what they ARE, we can maybe accept what they are NOT as well. Once we’ve tossed aside those first 3 stages we can really look at things as they actually are. Which leads us to…

Stage 5: Acceptance

The Chiefs aren’t a great team this year. But they’re also not cooked. They’re not actually bad, or even really average. They’re a likely playoff team with an outside shot at a Super Bowl. And that’s a place a lot of people would love to be.

Yes, the offense is currently average-ish, without a lot of relief in sight. BUT they’ve at least shown life in moving the ball lately (huzzah, I guess?).

They’ve also got one of the very best defenses in the NFL, one that (when most of it is healthy) can play virtually any style. And they have one of the best “one-off gameplan” defensive coordinators in the NFL in Steve Spagnuolo. They’ve held basically every team they’ve faced in check except (sort of) Jordan Love and the Packers, and that includes some genuinely great offenses. Which means in the playoffs, they’re in position to keep teams within a puncher’s chance.

And speaking of a puncher’s chance… let’s talk about that offense one more time. Yes, they are pretty average, maybe even subpar, thanks to the consistently inconsistent execution and mind-melting mistakes. And that’s a problem in terms of going on a run. Hence, the comparison to the 2013-2016 Chiefs offenses rather than the most recent stretch. That’s what they’ve been this year overall, a pretty “meh” sort of offense, with only one difference in that Patrick Mahomes is the quarterback.

But that difference? It matters. Like, a lot.

With a good defense, all it takes is a few games of Mahomes catching fire for the Chiefs to go on a run. That’s it. And as outlandish as it sounds (and it should), it’s not completely out of the question either. And that’s where it’s just as important to remember what the Chiefs are not as it is to remember what they are.

They might (doubtful, but might) miss the playoffs. They might get bounced in any of the rounds of the playoffs. That is definitely on the table. That’s life as a “pretty good” NFL team. Success in the playoffs is a hope, but not a likelihood. And by accepting that, I’m able to breathe a little easier when one of those confounding moments occurs that costs them a game.

But they’ve got a puncher’s chance. They’ve got a shot. It’s not a GOOD shot because of their flaws, but it’s there. And after 5 years of them being the favorite, I can live with a puncher’s chance now that I’m not expecting things to suddenly snap back to the way they were before 2023.

We’ll see where it goes from here. But I’ve accepted that this is who the 2023 Chiefs are. And as much of a bummer as that is, it allowed me to walk out of Arrowhead with a smile on my face on Sunday night. And I hope that by processing through the five steps with me you’ll be able to watch Chiefs football with more of a smile on your face this year. Or at least without quite as much agony.

And together, we’ll see how that puncher’s chance turns out. Usually, they don’t. But every now and then, with the right puncher… who knows what might happen?

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