A lot of people can relate to having one nagging problem that keeps creeping into your day-to-day life over and over again. Maybe you hit the stoplight wrong every morning on your commute to work. Perhaps the dog in the apartment next to yours wakes up at 5 AM every day and lets the entire complex know it, and your alarm doesn't go off until 6:30. Whatever it is, there's a point in time where you feel like it's never going to end and ultimately drive you crazy.
Then your solution brain kicks in. The part of your mind that finally peers through the fog of frustration and lends clarity to how you get off of the hamster wheel of insanity that you've found yourself on. "If the light at 95th and Metcalf is always red at 7:30 AM, I'll just hit that intersection at 7:25 from now on." "Sure the neighbor's dog is loud, but I've been in the market for a new set of headphones and these noise-canceling AirPods seem like a fantastic idea at this point."
Just like that, with two simple changes, you get rid of a couple of nagging problems in your life. At the end of it all, when you reflect on how you got to your new, much-less-annoyed lifestyle, you have to admit that the "Aha!" moment that hit you probably could have come a lot sooner–had you just chilled out and started looking for the solution instead of focusing solely on the problem. Some people are way better at this than others, but everyone is guilty of it on occasion.
Ugly or not, the Chiefs are still winning and all that's all they need to worry about.
With all of that in mind, let's consider the reaction some of us have had to the start to the Chiefs 2024 campaign. Has it been pretty? Most of the time, no. Have the Chiefs come out of the gate swinging and blowing teams out like, say, the Buffalo Bills? Absolutely not. The Chiefs are 3-0, yes, but they've accumulated those 3 wins by a combined 13 points. The Cardiac Chiefs are in full effect to start the season, and all of these close games and meaningful final drives have to indicate that this team might not be the juggernaut on its way to a third consecutive Super Bowl title, right?
It depends on if you're looking for the problems or what could be solutions down the road. The Chiefs have had to scratch and claw for each of their first three wins, but we also have to consider that those 3 games have been against teams that most would have pegged as playoff contenders in the preseason. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that all three will be playoff teams by the time we get to January. It's just that, as NFL fans, we forget sometimes that seasons aren't defined in September.
The short-term lens through which we view football is exacerbated by things like weekly power rankings, by fantasy football, by just about everything we interact with in our daily lives when it comes to sports. We're programmed to want excellence every week, which makes us completely numb to the fact that the process of a championship team blossoming into just that is as beautiful as the outcome itself. Teams like the Falcons, who have never won a Super Bowl, can be expected to do things like give away hot dogs and snacks in celebration of their owner's self-indulgent enshrinement into his own Hall of Fame. Teams like that can call a Sunday night game in Week 3 the biggest game in the seven-year history of their home stadium.
Teams like the Kansas City Chiefs cannot. And for Chiefs fans, it almost devalues the regular season at times. This leads to the fatigue I'm referring to when Twitter is ablaze that the team is not blowing teams out. The fact of the matter is that Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, or Andy Reid—any of the leaders in the Chiefs organization—do not get the same uptick in emotion from regular season games that they do for the playoffs. They approach these games as business transactions to complete: accumulate enough wins during timeframe X (regular season) to be able to participate in the real action during timeframe Y (the postseason). That mindset is going to lead to some blasé affairs.
This is where the team looks like they're "not sharp". Where Mahomes looks "off". Where the team in general looks like they're playing with their food. In all reality, this is the approach that great teams are going to take. In a game like football, you have to manage the regular season the best you can in order for the team to be the best version of itself during the postseason. That will lead to emotional highs and lows from the fanbase, but ultimately, as long as the wins continue to pile up, the rest as they say will take care of itself.
Would I love to see the Chiefs blow out teams the way the Bills blew out the Jaguars on Monday night? Yeah, I'd love nothing more than to see Mahomes toss the ball around the yard for 4 TD in the first half and for Travis Kelce to go vintage on us and have a few receiving touchdowns to go with 140 yards on 10 catches. We haven't seen it yet, but that doesn't mean it's not there.
Why open up the cavernous mind of Andy Reid too wide too early? Do we want the team to put everything this version of the Chiefs offense can become on film in September? I've lost more money than I've won playing poker, but even I know not to grin when I'm palming pocket aces.
Have there been problems with the Chiefs so far? Yes, the games have been downright ugly at times. Young players have not met expectations in some instances. But that's just who these Chiefs are going to be in 2024. They're simultaneously figuring out the micro portion of their roster while focusing on the macro aspect of the season as a whole. It may create some outcomes that are closer than we want them to be, and potentially may even lead to a couple of losses along the way. But I'll take a 0 in the loss column any day of the week and would wager to say the wins will continue to pile up - even if they are ugly.