If you want to blame Taylor Swift, that’s fine. She was already everywhere, but now she’s appearing on television in the hallowed space of a pro football game. That’s fair.
You can blame Patrick Mahomes, or more specifically, you can blame the fact that his wife, Brittany, is feeding on every camera Taylor appears with. That means she’s on TV more than Dr. Rick, who’s trying to stop a young homeowner from becoming her parent. It’s also fair.
Hey, are you a Giants fan who can’t stand the fact that Kadarius Toney is 60 minutes away from getting his second Super Bowl ring, or that Mecole Hardman is that close to getting his third? If you’re a confused Jets fan… sure. , it’s understandable that you’re fed up with the Kansas City Chiefs.
However, here’s the problem.
If Chiefs fatigue is an issue, and for many fantasy team owners outside of Missouri and Kansas and for whom drafting Mahomes regularly means always finishing within the 100. It’s a matter of percentages – the best explanation is also the simplest one. And in many ways, that’s the most complimentary thing you can say about a team or an athlete.
they are just good.
they are too good.
Think about how much of a place the Kansas City Chiefs were in your life five years ago. The Chiefs were, on many levels, a mirror image of their former AFL rivals, the Jets. Both won championships within a year of each other early in the Super Bowl era, but then experienced decades of incompetence and occasional bouts of hope.
But even some of that prosperity was fraught with danger. The Jets making the playoffs only collected scars like Gastineau’s goal-line assault on Bernie Kosar, Doug Brien, and LT in the Mud Bowl.
Chiefs? They beat the No. 1 seed 13-3 in the third inning and lost in the first playoff game at home. In 2014, they blew a 38-10 lead to the Colts in the third quarter in the playoffs. That game was one of eight straight playoff losses over a 25-year period.
If I felt anything towards the Chiefs, it was probably, just maybe, empathy. And if you’re a Jets fan, it’s probably a sense of solidarity.
And now…well, they can’t lose. they don’t lose. Two years ago, they won in overtime even though there were 13 seconds left in regulation. In the first game of Mahomes’ remarkable title run, the Chiefs blew a 24-0 lead over the Texans and still won by 20 points. They won two Super Bowls, but both times they fell behind in the fourth quarter and shrugged it off.
Perhaps most egregiously, they’ve been on the road for the past two weeks, trailing by significant margins in both games, and taking glee in breaking the hearts of die-hard Buffalo fans and crushing the spirits of die-hard Baltimore fans. Thing. And so the Chiefs reached one of the worst crossroads in sports.
A corner of excellence and self-righteousness.
A cross-pollination of the faint fuel of legitimate rule and no one believing in me. And once they accomplish that, Taylor and Mrs. Mahomes will be mixed in, along with all the personal grievances they’ve collected along the way…
That’s the secret to fatigue.
Chiefs fatigue.
The Chiefs are probably pissed about this, and their legion of loyal fans might be pissed about this, too, but in reality, this is the best flattery that can be tolerated. The NBA Warriors have not only experienced this, they have perfected it. The Patriots owned the copyright. The Yankees have registered the trademark. Duke basketball still values that. The Cowboys may have invented it, even if few people on the planet still remember why.
John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors, Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, Serena Williams, they all went through it. But in solo sports, there’s usually time to enjoy the back end, the other side of the legend. -Way Out Run. We can call this the Jack Nicklaus/Tiger Woods/Annika Sorenstam theorem.
In fact, it’s so rare that a player or team that reaches that level of governance escapes the grudges that come with it, leaving little room for explanation. For example, I’ve never heard anyone boo Roger Federer. The outliers in New York, Detroit, and Indianapolis may disagree, but the Jordan-era Bulls seem to have been largely respected and never criticized. If there was anyone who was truly actively rooting for the Lombardi Packers, it seems like they were forgotten in the mists of time.
This too will pass. Behind the scenes of being hated, the Patriots are learning how boring life can be. The Mets have been so pitied for so long that it’s hard to remember that no franchise may have been more hated than they have been in the last six or seven years.
The Chiefs will leave at some point. Andy Reid is retiring. Mahomes is going to get old. Somewhere in their future there will be 6-11 and 5-12 streaks. That’s it.
At this point? The Chiefs did what clearly should have been impossible. Completely neutral, otherwise normal fans root for San Francisco, which has stubbornly spent the last few decades perfecting the Niners’ fatigue.
