Patrick Mahomes Ensures Chiefs Dynasty With Back-to-Back Titles

In a season filled with dropped passes and close losses, the Kansas City quarterback made good on his declaration to his private coach: ‘We’re going to win the Super Bowl.’

The presents still needed to be opened. It was Christmas night, after all, inside the Kansas City–area mansion of the greatest player in professional football.

Patrick Mahomes preferred the wrapping paper stay on every present. There wasn’t much to celebrate and what he had hoped to enjoy—a win over the Las Vegas Raiders that afternoon in front of an increasingly skeptical home crowd—instead became a 20–14 loss, another stumble in a season that seemed to be teetering toward collapse. “Definitely never had a worse Christmas,” Mahomes said 10 days before his team’s 25–22 overtime win in Super Bowl LVIII.

Those f—ing presents. Two adorable young children teemed with excitement their father could not muster. He tried hiding his angst, as 2-year-old Sterling marveled at the bouncy house her parents had set up in the basement. He tried summoning kid Christmas energy, studying 1-year-old Patrick III, better known as Bronze, who opened a new basketball hoop.

Mahomes holds on to his third Lombardi Trophy over the past five seasons.

Mark J. Rebilas/USA TODAY Sports

All preseason, everyone in Kansas City sounded some version of the same theme: never satisfied. Travis Kelce said the chatter started the same night last February when the Kansas City Chiefs toppled the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LVII. All knew that no NFL champion had repeated since the New England Patriots in 2004, when Kelce was in high school and a few hundred receptions from catching the eye of Taylor Swift. That night, as dozens of lips smeared and smudged the Lombardi Trophy, all eyes pointed forward, ahead, Kelce says. “Two in a row,” teammates kept repeating.

The veterans hadn’t seized upon the same opportunity in 2020 after their first triumph against the 49ers. “And we’ve wanted that feeling of redemption,” Kelce says, “ever since.” He laughs, adding, “Just thinking about it is getting me fired up.” He was saying this nine days before kickoff against San Francisco.

Kelce knew. Deeply, implicitly, confidently, knew. He understood what Mahomes told members of his inner circle on Christmas night. That a franchise once defined by late-postseason losses and what the team’s founder referred to as “buzzard’s luck,” was now an international brand with a worldwide following. This season, Kansas City assembled its best defense of the Mahomes era. It had a good luck charm in Kelce’s Grammy-winning girlfriend. It had survived five playoff runs that unfolded like five lifetimes, with the Chiefs always on the verge of cementing a dynasty.

Mahomes hoped his children were young enough that they would forget the Christmas where Dad wasn’t his usual, jovial self. But he was oddly certain about the season, anyway.

That night, Mahomes discussed the seesawing of 2023 with his private coach, Jeff Christensen, all the dropped passes and close losses that portended doom.

“We’re going to win the Super Bowl,” Mahomes said. Just like that. Simple. Declarative. Firm.

The gift he wanted, he would have to earn.

Zoom forward 49 days. In the center of the Chiefs locker room, champagne sprayed, cigar smoke swirled and teammates sang “We Are the Champions.” Mahomes watched from the back, at his locker, as close as he would get Sunday to alone. He looked wistful, like a father watching his children. He shook his head and considered the rousing speech he gave that same group at the team hotel the night before. He didn’t write down a word. He followed a handful of other speakers, including Travis Kelce. But he knew the theme, because it tied everything together, from the worst Christmas to now: united.

“Let’s go out there and be us, man,” he told them. “We’re champions. We’ve always been champions. It’s gonna happen.”

Reid loves 3×5 index cards, scribbbling new plays, variations; messages to impart; someone he needs to reach, how. He keeps a blank stack in a desk drawer at Chiefs headquarters so he never runs out.

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Andy Reid’s brilliance lies in stacks of index cards. He carries them everywhere, always the 3×5 version, jamming them into pockets, tucking them into jackets or cradling them in meaty hands. He scribbles inspiration whenever it strikes: new plays, variations; messages to impart; someone he needs to reach, how. He keeps a blank stack in a desk drawer at Chiefs headquarters so he never runs out. “I don’t know how he never has,” Mahomes says. “He always has another 50 ready to go; that’s how he rolls, little red pen, index cards.”

NFL history is on those. Plays like 2-3 Jet Chip Wasp, which Kansas City famously deployed to convert a critical third-and-15 for their first Super Bowl triumph in half a century.

Viewed one way, index cards are to Reid what No. 2 Ticonderoga pencils are to Bill Belichick. They’re proof that Reid loves football. As his green Ford Model A attests, Reid is as much tinkerer as coach. Viewed another way, the cards illuminate Reid’s least-discussed strength: adaptability. And more proof was the 2023 season.

Perhaps this ethos of indexing came from Reid’s father, a man who applied the same thought process to entirely different realms. Walter Reid’s family emigrated from Scotland. His father worked as a caretaker at a mansion on Cape Cod. Walter met visitors from all over, while befriending workers of all types. He would apply all those lessons to his career as a scenic artist in Hollywood.