The decadent excess of the Kansas City Chiefs offense is ruining the ability for columnist Jacob Harris to watch the rest of the NFL with any pleasure at all.
Last Sunday, like most Sundays, I was sitting in my studio apartment, flipping back and forth between the two 1:00 p.m. games (I’m from Indiana and exist in Eastern Time, which is the only real time) CBS and FOX were offering: Indianapolis Colts vs. Tennessee Titans and Minnesota Vikings vs. Green Bay Packers.
I’m used to not having easy access to watching the Chiefs. If I’m not going to a sports bar (gross) or borrowing a friend’s Sunday Ticket password (I have no friends), I’m relegated to listening to the radio feed of the game online while watching other games on TV on mute.
Given the Chiefs were in a rare 4:05 p.m. kickoff slot, I was able to flip between the Colts vs. Titans and Vikings vs. Packers with far more focus and intent spent on those non-Chiefs games than usual. Normally, this is a very enjoyable experience; I’ve always dug consuming as much of every other team’s games as possible. I love the strategy of the game, witnessing the endless permutations that exist within the demand to move a ball from one goal line to another 100 yards away.
But an unpleasant feeling washed over me as I was watching these games. It’s a feeling that has reared its head frequently since the beginning of last season, but has only grown as Andy Reid, Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs’ offense continue to hit the gas and speed toward the future.
Football that doesn’t feature the Chiefs is borrrrrrrrrring. It’s in slow motion. So much of nothing happens for such long periods. No one throws the ball more than 10 yards down the field most of the time. Also, did you know a lot of games have total scores that don’t match what the Chiefs will score in a single quarter? I know, it’s wild!
This must be what it’s like to be a kid born into a world with smartphones, social media, and YouTube and to be asked to enjoy playing with a stick in the dirt. I’m only going to love digging in the dirt if I don’t know I could instead be surrounded with screens, simultaneously watching 10 separate videos where Rhett & Link eat foods made from various animals’ anuses.
Every week with the Chiefs I get to see something I’ve never seen before, and it’s always miraculous. Something will defy physics and leave me speechless. The bag of tricks in this offense seems bottomless, and I struggle to come up with any way to describe it that would be hyperbole. Like, I think Andy Reid’s offense sits third behind the wheel and internet for “Most Important Human Inventions”.
Ignorance really is bliss. Before Mahomes, I could watch the Jets face the Bengals and enjoy myself. Now every game that doesn’t have the Chiefs is just a sad shell of what football could be—a ghost of the past clinging to this world when it should be slipping into limbo.
It’s taken me a year to get to a point where I can admit the Chiefs have made all other football boring, but here I finally am. I’ve yawned at close, competitive games that would have kept me on the edge of my seat in years past. Rookies and young quarterbacks slowly developing into quality players and future stars leave me perpetually unimpressed. I’ve seen what the future looks like, and I can’t go back.
Watching the Chiefs’ offense is hedonistic, and the withdrawals once it’s all over in 20 years will be intense. But in 2040, while I’m cold-sweating and vomiting in the toilet as I watch the Chiefs battle the Seattle Dragons in the first year of the NFL-XFL merger, I’ll know it was all worth it. Sometimes I wonder what’d it’d be like to poke my head into the alternate universe where right now the Chiefs are still trying to make Paxton Lynch a thing.
I feel like someone who lucked into extreme wealth and no longer knows how to appreciate the little things. I’m living the good life, and the idea of being excited for Daniel Jones’ NFL debut makes me nauseous. The only non-Chiefs team that has come even close to suitably entertaining for me is the Dolphins. They’re as astronomically bad as the Chiefs are good. They’re like watching the NFL equivalent of The Room. Tommy Wiseau may actually be an improvement for them at quarterback.
So this is my desperate plea to the rest of the NFL: get better. Take your time. Enough for the Chiefs to cash in on a Super Bowl or six, but please do try to catch up. You’re all lagging so far behind, and it’s ruining my Sundays.