By Aizak Miller
Sports Editor
The talk of the sports world right now is will the Kansas City Chiefs three peat (win three super bowls in a row), which has never been done in NFL history. What the Kansas City Chiefs have done in the last seven years is rare. For some reason it seems like non Chiefs fans and the media do not seem to praise the Chiefs for what they are accomplishing and doing.
Since the 2018-2019 season the Chiefs have been to seven straight AFC (American Football Conference) championship games and to the Super Bowl the past 5 out of 6 years. They have won back-to-back super bowls in 2023 and 2024. They join the Patriots, Cowboys, and Steelers as the only franchises in the NFL to win three Super Bowls over the course of 5 years. Now they are the first team to get to the super bowl with the chance to three peat.
All those stats are not normal and do not happen a lot, but for some reason it feels like the media and fans do not respect it or realize the greatness of what is happening right now. Why might that be? There’s a couple reasons the first one being the NFL just went through what is considered “the dynasty” with the New England Patriots (2001-2019). I mentioned the Chiefs have been to seven straight AFC championship games and won 3 super bowls, but the Patriots had a stretch where they went to eight straight AFC championship games. Over 18 years they went to nine super bowls and won six of them. The Patriots dynasty was incredibly good for a long time, and what the Chiefs are on pace for is better than that, but they still do not have the longevity to compare the two.
With the Patriots being so successful for a long time, fans of other teams do not prefer to witness it again for a good amount of time so they can see their team or different teams have success each year. The more you win, the easier it is for the media and fans to get tired of you. So now that the chiefs have been dominant for the past eight years fans start to get sick of it and make up narratives or find anything they can to pick on the Chiefs including the officiating.
The main thing fans and the media use to cause more hate on the Chiefs is the officiating of the games. The saying “The Chiefs get all the calls” is something that NFL fans have heard before. Which is not entirely true, since 2018 the Chiefs have had the 7th worst Penalty Advantage (the total number of calls/penalties in the team’s favor) in the NFL. What a coincidence that the team with the best penalty advantage in the NFL since 2018 is the Cincinnati Bengals. The Bengals and Chiefs have formed a miniature rivalry after playing against each other in the AFC championship game in 2022 when the Bengals beat the Chiefs 27-24, and in 2023 when the Chiefs beat the Bengals 23-20. There has been a lot of trash talk all over the media between these two that has caused some hate between the teams and fan bases.
Another team the Chiefs have built a bigger rivalry with is the Buffalo Bills. The Chiefs just beat the Bills in the AFC Championship 32-29. The Bills quarterback had more roughing the passer calls for him this year than Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes. The Chiefs had the second fewest unnecessary roughness calls for them and the Bills had the most unnecessary roughness calls for them. The Chiefs also led the league in holding penalties not in their favor this year (31) and had two of the most penalized players on their team this year in Jawaan Taylor offensive tackle (15 penalties) and cornerback Joshua Williams (10). So, the narrative “the Chiefs get all the calls” is not exactly true.
In the summer of 2024 star tight end for the Chiefs Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift had some rumors around the two celebrities dating. In the fall of 2024, when the season was going, she appeared at a game, which solidified the two together. She started to go to Kelce’s games and the camera seemed to find her more than people would like, and some would say it was distracting. This relationship has caused a lot of attention, and when you win a bunch it just creates more of a target on your back.
The Chiefs are just all over the media and head coach Andy Reid and star players Mahomes and Kelce have been in many commercials the last couple of years. According to usatoday.com, during the 2023 NFL regular season Kelce appeared in 375 commercials the most out of any player in the NFL, Mahomes was second with 341. The attention they get outside of football too causes many fans to not appreciate the greatness and dislike the exposure.
The more you win, the more people will find ways to not like you and start false narratives about you. The Chiefs are going to go down as one of the greatest dynasties ever but the disrespect and fans who are tired of it make it to where we do not fully realize what is happening right now. The Chiefs will look to go for their third straight super bowl win Sunday February 9th at 5:30pm against the Philadelphia Eagles on FOX.
