Whatever happens at the conclusion of the 2024 NFL season and Super Bowl LIX, the Kansas City Chiefs proved yet again that they are the most dominant franchise in US professional sports. Of course, there are arguments that there are superior teams in sports today, but when looking at multiple seasons, nobody can really hold a candle to this team.
Of course, most of this is known already, even to non-football fans. Yet, it is worth noting that there were plenty of doubts over the Chiefs’ credentials this season. Indeed, their Super Bowl odds dropped at one point, as many experts felt the Chiefs’ performances did not match the results. Yet, statistics matter, and the Chiefs recorded a 15-2 season (a franchise record) despite all the criticism. The team also clinched its 9th consecutive AFC West title, meaning it is closing in on the record of divisional titles held by the New England Patriots (11).
Experts doubted the Chiefs across the 2024 season.
Despite all this, the Chiefs got a lot of criticism. There was some sound reasoning for this, as the team tended to win games by small margins, and it rarely blew rivals away. What’s more, the conspiracy theories started to kick in (as they often do with winning teams; ask fans of the New England Patriots in the 2000s and 2010s), with some suggestions that referees favored the Chiefs.
Yet, despite the acceptable margins, the Chiefs kept winning across 2024, just as they did in 2023 and 2022 and the years before. Sure, they lost a couple of games here and there, but head coach Andy Reid has built a winning machine. The numbers say it all: A regular season record of 40-11 over the past three seasons. In the postseason, their Playoff record read 14-2 (before the AFC Championship game with the Bills), stretching back to 2019. It’s an incredible record of dominance.
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And that, perhaps, is the rub. Every other sports franchise around can look at the Chiefs and see much more than a star quarterback back in Patrick Mahomes or the tactical nous of Andy Reid. You can’t replicate that without the personnel. What they should see is a team with a supreme mentality. Being clutch, winning ugly in football, or whatever you want to call it, can only be talked about when it happens too often to be a coincidence. We saw the word luck mentioned several times with the Chiefs this season – one of the reasons for the biased referee's conspiracies –but you cannot fluke the winning record the team put up in 2024.
Other great teams possessed that never-say-die attitude.
We have seen it in the past with great sports teams. Manchester United, the English soccer club that had two decades of dominance under legendary coach Alex Ferguson, had a similar vibe, an ability to win when the team played poorly, a knack for grabbing victory from the jaws of defeat, and yes, Manchester United under Ferguson faced conspiracies about referees being biased too. As we mentioned, it was a similar vibe under the Brady-Belichick axis at the Patriots. In a sense, the mentality of those teams means that opponents are beaten before they step onto the field.
Can the qualities that the Chiefs possess be learned? Not necessarily, but they can be earned. Reid and his staff have instilled a sense of belief and hunger in the Chiefs players that gives them an extra something extra, but the wins fortify this. They know they can force the game if they are down by a score with seconds on the clock because they have been there before. And that is the lesson. If you are learning how to build or be part of a winning football team, don’t go back to watch the Chiefs’ plays or Reid’s tactics across the 2024 season; look at their will to win. That is the X-factor.
