Over the past few years, there has been a mantra common in Chiefs Kingdom. A simple line said by Kansas City Chiefs fans when things are bleak, uttered after a loss or an underwhelming performance, its purpose is to reinstall belief and build positivity: “As long as the Chiefs have Patrick Mahomes, they have a chance,"
Aimed at instilling hope, the phrase became the tagline of Kansas City’s season.
As the Chiefs endured agonizing, mistake-ridden defeats to the Lions, Broncos, Packers, and Bills—each one more maddening than the last—those words would be said as the last beacon of optimism that things would turn around.
But as the season went on and the penalties, drops, and offensive miscues endured, those words became hollow. They were said not out of expectation, but in hope, a sort of prayer to the football god that is Mahomes. It was a phrase with the aim of bringing reassurance, but instead, it had a whiff of desperation about it.
Not anymore.
With Mahomes and the Chiefs set to face the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII, the words “as long as the Chiefs have Mahomes, they have a chance” have taken on a whole new level of meaning.
The saying is now irrefutable. It has become a statement of fact, an undeniable truth. A declaration that cannot be doubted. It has been proven beyond question, that any arguments to the contrary dispelled.
The fact that the Chiefs—this Kansas City Chiefs team with all its flaws and imperfections—vanquished the best teams in the AFC to reach their fourth Super Bowl in five years is simply remarkable.
All of Chiefs Kingdom knew Kansas City’s defense was good enough to lift the team to a Super Bowl, but all the doubts lay with the offense.
This year we saw what was by far the most limited Chiefs offense of the Mahomes era the drops, the penalties, the persistent inability to execute plays. The Chiefs have never felt more vulnerable. But with Mahomes at the helm, here they are about to play for another Lombardi Trophy.
It is extraordinary.
We have all seen countless examples of Mahomes’s greatness before: the unbelievable plays, the big-time throws and runs, the miraculous comebacks again and again. It's an ability to do the kind of things nobody in the NFL world has seen before.
But what we have seen this year is something different, something arguably even more impressive than the playoff comeback against the Houston Texans, the fourth-quarter comeback in Super Bowl LIV against the 49ers, or the second-half turnaround against the Eagles in last year’s Super Bowl.
With what Mahomes the Chiefs have been able to overcome over the course of the most turbulent season in years, there is now no questioning the phrase, “As long as the Chiefs have Patrick Mahomes, they have a chance”.