History is against the Kansas City Chiefs building a dynasty

The Green Bay Packers and Aaron Rodgers

If you were looking for a quarterback to compare Patrick Mahomes to in terms of raw talent, I think Aaron Rodgers is the only other guy in the league in his range. Rodgers took the league by storm when he took over as the Green Bay Packers starting quarterback in 2008 after serving as Brett Favre’s backup for three seasons. Rodgers was instantly successful and would go on to lead the Packers to a Super Bowl win in his third season as a starter (2010).

If anyone had told us after that Super Bowl win that Rodgers would not even make it to another Super Bowl in the following nine seasons we would have laughed at them. The same way we would laugh at anyone if they told us that Mahomes wouldn’t make it to another one in the next nine years.

While Rodgers has had a couple of seasons cut short by injury, for the most part he has continued to be one of the elite quarterbacks in the NFL. In fact, I think that you can make an argument that Rodgers has had four MVP caliber seasons since he won the Super Bowl (2011, 2012, 2014, and 2016). He did, in fact, win the MVP in two of those seasons (2011 and 2014).

In those four seasons, I mentioned Rodgers averaged over 4,400 yards, 40 touchdowns, and just 6.5 interceptions. Rodgers has been the absolute best in the league multiple times in his career in terms of production and physically playing the position in a way nobody else was capable of playing it. Despite that, his team was never even able to make it back to the Super Bowl. So why is that?

Well, the answer to this one is a little more complicated. The year the Packers won the Super Bowl they did have one of their best defenses. They ended that season ranked #5 in the NFL in yards per game allowed and #2 in points per game allowed. The Packers defense was much more middle of the pack in Rodgers best seasons since then. While Rodgers has had some talented weapons at times there have also been a few down periods where the offense needed some more play makers as well.

Finally, I think the situation with Mike McCarthy has to be factored in as well. It became clear the longer they were together that Rodgers and McCarthy were not always on the same page. When a coach doesn’t have the faith of his star player, it makes it hard for a team to thrive. While we don’t know the inner workings of the Packers, I feel comfortable saying that I don’t feel like McCarthy did a good job of evolving his offense with the times. It seemed stagnant, especially in the later years.

While I think the Packers can be another example of how you have to keep enough talented players around your star quarterback (on both sides of the ball) I think the real lesson for KC is that they need to keep the healthy player/coach relationships that are such a foundation of the Chiefs team under coach Andy Reid and his staff.

While I hope that Reid coaches for several more years, the odds of him staying for Mahomes entire tenure is very unlikely. If the Chiefs truly want to build a dynasty they will have to find a replacement for Reid that can keep the good chemistry going.

So let’s see if we can sum up what we can learn from these teams if the Chiefs want to become a true dynasty.