As Super Bowl champions, the Kansas City Chiefs were the best NFL team in 2019. Is it possible for them to get better and even achieve perfection in 2020?
During the 2019 offseason, a lot was made of the Kansas City Chiefs. They had just come off their best season in 49 years, ending mere inches from their first Super Bowl berth since 1969. One could argue a simple coin flip decided the ultimate fate of the season, as the deadliest unit on the Chiefs never had a chance to flex its muscles in overtime of the AFC Championship game.
Their second-year signal caller, the only first-round draft pick at quarterback for the franchise since 1983, just won the franchise’s first NFL Most Valuable Player award. Some believed Patrick Mahomes had already ascended to the top of the league at the position and would run roughshod over his opponents for the next 10 to 15 years. It helped that he was tutored by one of the greatest offensive minds in the history of the NFL, had a year to sit behind an NFL statesman in Alex Smith, and had a bevy of Pro Bowl weapons at his disposal.
On the defensive side of the ball, while the 2018 unit had struggled, the 2019 unit had a number of new acquisitions including a new defensive coordinator. Steve Spagnuolo was the man behind the 2007 New York Giants and their historic dismantling of the vaunted New England Patriots offense. Most believed he was the missing link to a Super Bowl and as fate would have it they’d be proven correct.
I bring all this up because there were high expectations for the 2019 Chiefs, obviously. I think some are forgetting just how high those expectations were. Some in the national and local media believed the Chiefs had the chance to go undefeated and be the first team to finish the season 19-0. Some believed the Chiefs offense had a chance to score 60 points in a game, as Mahomes was entering his second season as the starter and the team had added a speedster in Mecole Hardman in the second round of the 2019 NFL Draft.
The Chiefs finished the season as Super Bowl champions, but fell short of their somewhat self-imposed Herculean expectations. They suffered a myriad of injuries, a number of strange losses, and ultimately finished the season as the second-seed and not the one-seed. In the end, it really didn’t matter as the team had one goal: to hoist the Lombardi Trophy in February.
So, why are we talking about this? The truth is, while the expectation of perfection and 19-0 is a wild one, there’s reason to believe that the 2020 Kansas City Chiefs are in a much better position to achieve perfection than the 2019 Chiefs. Here are a few reasons why.