Predicting national narratives for each of KC Chiefs biggest games in 2022

Can you feel it? Hear it? Taste it?

We’re days away from kickoff of the 2022 regular season, and I can already sense the preemptive demise of the Kansas City Chiefs coming with every cell in my body. As we in Chiefs Kingdom prepare for Year 5 of the Patrick Mahomes era to begin, it seems that national prognosticators have (at times, anyway) hitched their wagons to other teams in the AFC West and NFL.

Gone are the days of “It’s the Chiefs and everyone else” being the sentiment throughout league circles. With such robust additions via free agency and trades this offseason—Von Miller to the Bills, Russell Wilson to the Broncos, Davante Adams to the Raiders, and so on—the Chiefs’ “stand Pat” approach to roster building in 2022 seems antiquated at best. The darling spotlight has shifted to other cities and teams, and the Chiefs seem to be somewhat of an afterthought to much of the NFL world heading into this season. Even recently, after being named the top player in the NFL in the league’s annual NFL 100 in 2021, Mahomes was listed as the 8th best player on this year’s list.

Let’s look at what the national talking points will likely be when it comes to the Kansas City Chiefs’ biggest games in 2022.

Why is that? Let me introduce to you a concept that is more prevalent in the NBA than it is in the NFL. Greatness Fatigue. Should Michael Jordan have won the MVP in the NBA every season he played? Absolutely. Karl Malone winning the award in 1997 was simply voters yawning and saying they’d had enough of producing the same vote over and over again every year that Jordan was actually playing in the league. The same could be said for LeBron James from 2009-2014. Did he win most MVP awards? Yes. But you sprinkle in a Derrick Rose win in 2011 and a Kevin Durant MVP in 2014 before the LeBron dominance era subsided a touch with the comeuppance of the Golden State Warriors. Were they better players than LeBron? No. But people wanted something different.

Sound familiar? Patrick Mahomes has made the irregular look pretty pedestrian at this point. The spectacular has become routine. The way that Mahomes not only pulls off miraculous plays but effortlessly guides the Chiefs’ extremely complex offense year after year after year has produced fatigue in the national media and fans around the league that now makes people long for something different. For someone new to come and take the title of “best in the game”. The Chiefs can turn that tide in 2022 by winning the games we’re discussing here and riding that wave of momentum to another Lombardi Trophy in February.

Chiefs fans, as a whole, seem bullish on that idea and are coming into 2022 with optimism for what the season will bring. Tyreek Hill is gone, sure, but the Chiefs’ wide receiver room is deeper than it’s been, maybe ever with the additions of Juju Smith-Schuster, Marquez Valdez-Scantling, and rookie Skyy Moore. Tyrann Mathieu and Charvarius Ward are both gone, but free agency and the draft have loaded the respective secondary meeting rooms. Sack nation seemed like it had receded from the Union last season, but with the additions of Carlos Dunlap, George Karlaftis, and most recently Danny Shelton, the Chiefs’ defensive front all of a sudden looks – dare I say – dangerous.

So where does the true prognostication for the Chiefs’ impending Revenge Tour actually land? Naturally, somewhere in the middle of homer-ism (Chiefs fans) and skepticism (the national media). The Chiefs aren’t going to go 16-1 or 15-2 every season like we’d like to hope, but they’re probably also not dead like many of the thirsty-for-clicks hot take machines on TV and Twitter would like to lead you to believe, either.

Regardless, the reality of the situation is that the national headlines are a cause for frustration for Chiefs fans, specifically over the past ~18 months. Feeling left behind and forgotten is never preferred. But if there is one quarterback you want on a team that has been indirectly written off by the national media for the younger up-and-comers like Joe Burrow and Justin Herbert. For every media outlet of personality that looks at Russell Wilson and says “Let’s Ride”, Patrick Mahomes is on the other side of the equation saying “not today”.