For the Dynastic Kansas City Chiefs, Sad That Haters Will Hate, Hate, Hate.
Sorry for this Kansas City Chiefs Nation, and apologies for another Swift allusion, but given the society we live in now, get ready for “the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate,” You’ve endured a lot of criticism this week as critics slammed the defending Super Bowl champions and successor apparent to the Tom Brady-Bill Belichick New England Patriots. After winning again on Sunday, more is on the way.
The good news for Chiefs fans was that while the haters were busy hating the Chiefs and their consummate-winning quarterback Patrick Mahomes, all Chiefs fans had to do to feel better was remember another lyric from the same song: “Players gonna play, play, play, play, play.” And that’s exactly what happened in Las Vegas during Super Bowl LVIII, when the Chiefs defeated the San Francisco 49ers 25-22 in overtime to win their third Super Bowl in a row.
The players kept playing and playing.
Mahomes tossed and ran for 399 total yards, leading the Chiefs on a 13-play, 75-yard overtime drive that concluded with a touchdown pass with three seconds left on the clock. And he did so with the calm, clinical focus that we’ve come to expect from him when the game is on the line. Mahomes’ leadership earned him his third MVP trophy, but it made me wonder why Kansas City and Mahomes were portrayed as villains in the week leading up to the Championship.
Yes, I made the argument for rooting for San Francisco quarterback Brock Purdy because of his absolutely incredible and unprecedented journey from being named Mr. Irrelevant as the final player drafted in 2022 to being a Super Bowl starting quarterback less than two years later. But we never intimated that rooting for the underdog meant sacrificing the Chiefs’ legacy of resilience and adaptation.
In an interview with CBS Sports Nate Burleson, Mahomes commented on his club’s burgeoning image as the team everyone loves to hate—a label previously attributed to the Patriots.
“You definitely have gotten that sense this year,” Mahomes explained. “I believe this is the year that has truly turned out that way. That’s part of it—you transform into the evil. You become the team no one wants to win. You must accept that in order to be great.”
That’s a fairly sporting response from Mahomes, who spent a significant portion of last week being grilled about his new job as “villain.” However, I believe we should be marveling at what the Chiefs have accomplished rather than portraying them as the latest and best bunch of bad guys on the block.
