With the 2026 NFL regular season just around the corner, another season of The Franchise has begun! The Franchise follows the Kansas City Chiefs throughout their journey each year, and the first episode of the new season catches us up on what happened over the summer.
The episode, entitled "Roots", starts with star quarterback Patrick Mahomes signing his extension. There's a flashback to when Mahomes signed his first extension with the team back in 2020, just months after leading the Chiefs to their first Super Bowl win in 50 years.
At the time of that extension, Mahomes had said he was "excited for the future in Kansas City". No one had any idea at the time that just four years later, the Chiefs would be the dynasty team of the 2020s, winning two more Super Bowls in the 2022 and 2023 seasons.
Panning back to the present day, Mahomes recapped what he's been through as a Chief and said, "We're not done yet." He also mentioned that he wants to finish his career in Kansas City, and it's safe to say that Chiefs fans all want that as well.
Next up is a segment about wide receiver Xavier Worthy, who is driving around Fresno, California, with his mother. The two stop at Worthy's elementary school, and his mom tells us about how Worthy would always play sports with the older kids.
We learn more about Worthy's childhood, seeing clips of him playing football as a kid. His mom says that Worthy's uncle, Nick, had the biggest impact on him and was always running drills with him.
Worthy apparently always knew he was going to end up with the Chiefs when he entered the draft. His mom told him there was no way they'd be in a position to take her son, but Worthy just had a feeling. On draft night, she said the Chiefs hat ended up in the very middle of their NFL hat layout (because each player gets all 32 team hats), which made it look like that's where they wanted to go, and what do you know? That's where Worthy ended up!
"I couldn't but stop and think about my dad and how excited he would have been to see the games played in the stadium he loved so much."Clark Hunt, on K.C. as a World Cup host
"It was just dope," Worthy's mom said.
"It wasn't even a shock to me, not gonna lie," Worthy said about landing with the Chiefs.
The Franchise takes us back to Kansas City for the next segment as owner Clark Hunt discusses the World Cup taking place in K.C. over the summer. We then get a nice history lesson on Hunt's father, Lamar Hunt's, involvement in soccer and trying to get a men's league started in the United States. Even after several failed attempts, Lamar Hunt kept trying to make this sport stick in the States.
Clark Hunt said of his father, "Every time I attended a World Cup game this summer at Arrowhead, I couldn't but stop and think about my dad and how excited he would have been to see the games played in the stadium he loved so much."
The final segment from episode one is the preparation for training camp, which kicked off in mid-July in St. Joseph, Missouri. Offensive guard Trey Smith is picking out clothes to take with him to St. Joe and explaining the thought process behind what to pack.
Smith is then seen driving to St. Joseph and says, "It's anticipation of, like, a new year. No one cares what you did last year... What are you about to do now in the present?"
The episode ends with various Chiefs coaches explaining the importance of training camp and what to expect from this team. With one week of preseason to go, the next episode will likely detail the entirety of training camp and the first two preseason games.
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