The many tumultuous franchises of today’s NFL make the Chiefs look even better.
“Winning cures everything,” goes the quote. The Kansas City Chiefs are proof positive.
Less than a decade ago, the Chiefs were one of the single most toxic teams in professional sports. With Scott Pioli at the helm in the front office, the Chiefs were a paranoid operation with a ridiculous shroud of secrecy over top dictatorial control of a team that was losing year after year.
From the murder-suicide of Jovan Belcher to the clear lack of talent at the game’s most important position to the infighting between Pioli and his hand-picked head coach Todd Haley, the Chiefs were an absolute dumpster fire that no one wanted to be around. Even fans disappeared entirely or resorted to drastic measures to “Save Our Chiefs.”
When an organization decides to rid itself of the toxic culture and organizational decay, it typically takes considerable time and effort and the latter was certainly true even for the Chiefs. Team owner Clark Hunt cleaned house top to bottom in order to bring in general manager John Dorsey and head coach Andy Reid. The end result was nothing short of miraculous as the Chiefs qualified for the postseason just one season after picking first overall in the NFL Draft.
Since the hiring of Andy Reid, the Chiefs have won nearly 70 percent of their games during the regular season. Last season, they even shook off their postseason woes with their first championship in a half century. These days, all anyone can talk about is how many rings the Chiefs will end up winning. The d-word—”dynasty”—is thrown around like an expectation instead of a dream.
These days, the organizational health enjoyed by the Chiefs looks even better when compared to the stench emanating from some teams. In Green Bay, there’s a clear rift between their biggest star and their front office. In Houston, GM Bill O’Brien is undoing any good work that head coach Bill O’Brien has put in. With one more losing season, the regimes currently in charge in Arizona, Detroit, Chicago, Jacksonville, and Atlanta are all gone.
And those aren’t even the worst examples. The Washington Football Team (yep!) has been the very definition of a toxic franchise ever since Dan Snyder decided he wanted to play NFL owner. Not only is the team trying to rename itself, but it’s also trying to turn around an organizational culture that sounds more like a middle school boys locker room. New head coach Ron Rivera recently spoke about the very need for a cultural change.
"“There’s a lot of things we’ve gotta change and correct so we can go forward,” Rivera told ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap on Outside the Lines. “We’re trying to create an inclusive culture, a culture where people buy in and support us, help us, we support them, we help them. We want to change it to the point where people are proud of who we are as we go forward as an organization.”"
Over in the AFC East, the New York Jets have been spinning their wheels behind the New England Patriots for two decades. Yet even with another early first round quarterback investment and other star players, the team can’t right itself—namely because it can’t even find leaders who can steer the ship.
Jamal Adams, the single best defender on the team and the very player around whom they should be building on that side, has attempted to demand a trade away from the team for the entire offseason. He finally detailed the reasons why—the poor leadership of head coach Adam Gase—in a recent feature with the New York Daily News.
"“I don’t feel like he’s the right leader for this organization to reach the Promised Land,” Adams said. “As a leader, what really bothers me is that he doesn’t have a relationship with everybody in the building. At the end of the day, he doesn’t address the team. If there’s a problem in the locker room, he lets another coach address the team. If we’re playing sh—y and we’re losing, he doesn’t address the entire team as a group at halftime. He’ll walk out of the locker room and let another coach handle it.”"
These are the sorts of quotes that would have come out of Kansas City seven to 10 years ago. Players were upset. The coach was hamstrung by the front office. Fans were forced to watch a pitiful product. Whatever pride there was to be found in a city having its own professional sports franchise was completely missing for several years—at least when it came to the Chiefs.
Fortunately those days are long gone. The culture in Kansas City is one of belonging and family. Players know that leaders are being honest with them in whatever they are told, and they respond positively to that authenticity by wanting to give their best efforts for that franchise. Everyone knows the NFL is a business first and foremost, but there are ways within that umbrella to engender very real connections and community.
The Chiefs certainly aren’t the only team serving as a model franchise these days. In fact, a few teams have been at this much, much longer than K.C. However, from Clark Hunt to Brett Veach, Andy Reid to Patrick Mahomes, the Chiefs are certainly one of the first teams mentioned when it comes to a strong organizational culture from the top down. And it stands out even more when you read the latest headlines from other teams.