Kansas City Chiefs: Heartbreak for today, hope for tomorrow

The Kansas City Chiefs lost a heartbreaker to the New England Patriots to bring their season to a tragic close. Yes, it was brutal, but at least there is now hope for the future.

Most days I love writing about the Kansas City Chiefs, but every once in a while the heartbreak is so raw it becomes hard to put things into perspective. Frankly, with the 37-31 overtime loss to the New England Patriots having just concluded a little over an hour ago as I write this, it’s hard to even put together coherent sentences.

My mind is a blur of thoughts like:

“Dee Ford! Just line up onsides! How can you? Ugh!”

“The offense in the first half… if Patrick Mahomes just hits Damien Williams…”

“If the Chiefs just have one of those bad calls late in the game go their way…”

“NFL overtime rules! If we just win the coin toss…”

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It’s excruciating. They were THAT close to a dream that for so long felt impossible to reach. I honestly believed going into the game that the Chiefs were going to win. It wasn’t just blind homer-ism either. The Chiefs were the number one seed. They had home field advantage. They had the MVP at quarterback. Yes, I know Tom Brady and Bill Belichick are the greatest to ever do it, but it was going to be different this year. Until it wasn’t. Sigh.

I’m not here to tell you that you shouldn’t be crushed. I am. I’m not here to tell you that you shouldn’t be pissed at all the little things that went wrong in that game that made the difference between us finally getting to see our team in the Super Bowl and this agony we’re in right now. I feel your pain. I’m not here to tell you that you shouldn’t be calling for Bob Sutton’s job after the defense we worried about all season long let Tom Brady and the Patriots drive right down the field and score touchdowns on their final two drives of the game. I’m right there with you.

Today sucks. Period. And you are certainly entitled to feel whatever feelings of anger, disappointment, frustration, and sadness that are rushing through your mind at this point.

All that said, if we take a step back and look at things, the future of this team, looks really bright. In fact, let’s not even look to the future just yet. Instead, let’s take just a moment to reflect on what this team did this season. In a 23 year old quarterback’s first season as a starter the team went 12-4, had the best offense in football, had that first time starting quarterback throw for over 5,000 yards and 50 touchdowns in a MVP season, won the division, was the number one seed in the AFC, and pushed the greatest quarterback, coach, and team of this generation into overtime in the AFC Championship Game. If we’re being honest, if someone had offered us this season exactly as it played out back in August I think we all would have signed up for it in a heartbeat.

I think most of us thought that Patrick Mahomes had a chance to be special before the season began, but both he and this team were ahead of where even us die-hard Mahomes believers thought we would be. This season was a success from a big picture standpoint. That should give you some hope for what is to come. It just may take a few days/weeks for the sting of this loss to wear off before that big picture comes into focus.

If the NFL hit the reset button and teams had to completely re-draft their team from all current NFL players there isn’t a doubt in my mind that Patrick Mahomes would be the first player taken. He’s a 23-year-old quarterback that had one of the three greatest statistical seasons EVER in the history of the NFL in his first year as a starter. That’s absolutely absurd. Who does that?!

I’ll tell you who. The Kansas City Chiefs starting quarterback does. Patrick Lavon Mahomes II. He’s ours. Nobody else can have him. Even if he was all that K.C. had going for them the future would still look pretty good. The thing is, Mahomes isn’t all they have going for them.

Andy Reid, despite some flaws, is easily a top 10 (maybe even five) coach in this league. They have two elite weapons in Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce that will be back. They have other guys like Sammy Watkins, Damien Williams, and Demarcus Robinson as well as most of their offensive line coming back, which means there is absolutely no reason to think this offense won’t be great again next year.

The Chiefs’ front office really has just one mission this offseason. Upgrade the defense. They don’t need to be the 1985 Bears on defense to win a Super Bowl. They really just need to upgrade from bad to average. That’s certainly not an impossible task, especially since they have some nice defensive pieces to work with. But we’ve got all offseason now to talk about what to do with the defense. The point is that there is a lot to be excited about when it comes to the future of the Kansas City Chiefs.

That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be furious that Dee Ford was lined up offsides.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t curse under your breath every time you think about that ridiculous roughing the passer call or the bobbled pass that touched the grass but was still ruled a reception that helped sustain the Patriots fourth-quarter touchdown drive.

That doesn’t mean you have to like Bob Sutton as a defensive coordinator.

You can be both heartbroken and hopeful. I know I am. So take your time to deal with this loss however you need to. Whenever you are ready we’ll be here all offseason long discussing who needs to go and who needs to stay. We’ll talk about what positions they should target in the draft and which players are the best fit for KC at those positions. The difference this offseason will be that we will approach it all with the absolute belief that Kansas City will be a Super Bowl contender again next season because of Patrick Mahomes. He’s that special.

Now if you’ll excuse me I need to go vent about Tom Brady and Dee Ford a little more before I can get some sleep. I mean seriously, how can you be lined up offsides at that moment?! For one glorious second, I thought the Super Bowl was ours. And then it wasn’t.

Sigh…