The Kansas City Chiefs are trying to do something no team has ever done: win three straight Super Bowls.
The rest of the NFL is trying to stop them.
Here are the key elements of the Chiefs’ success, which will again play a role in their quest — and could provide clues to how other teams can unseat the kings of the NFL.
Other stories in series: How past 3-peat bids failed | Steve Spagnuolo’s genius | What if Travis Kelce hits wall? | Rookies who could lift KC
In the fraternity of NFL quarterbacks, it’s not unusual for one member to show respect to the next.
But sometimes, as happened this week, the irony is strong.
Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes was asked about his Baltimore Ravens counterpart, Lamar Jackson. Mahomes lauded the reigning MVP’s athleticism, throwing ability and competitive nature.
“He wants to go out there and win and put it on his shoulders,” Mahomes said. “It’s not all about talent. It’s about: Can you go out there and compete every single week and find ways? Whenever you don’t have your best stuff, your team doesn’t have your best stuff, you find ways to win football games.
“That’s what it truly takes to be a great quarterback in this league.”
The praise was well-founded and well-earned. But Mahomes’ description of Jackson felt like something more.
An NFL quarterback carrying his team, even when things go awry? Patrick Mahomes might as well have been talking about himself.
Appearing in four of the last five Super Bowls, and winning three, the Chiefs have not simply had the most talented team or the best-coached team. They have not paid every star who’s helped win a Lombardi Trophy (hello Miami Dolphins receiver Tyreek Hill and Tennessee Titans cornerback L’Jarius Sneed) nor have they benefited simply from luck.
On the days when Mahomes and the Chiefs have their best, yes, they are unstoppable. But what’s maddened and thwarted the rest of the NFL for the last half-decade is that the Chiefs keep triumphing even in games and seasons in which their deficiencies shine loudly and clearly.
So NFL teams aiming to thwart the Chiefs’ three-peat bid ask themselves: Is there a recipe for that kind of resilience-powered success? What can we learn from the Kansas City formula?
Yahoo Sports surveyed four front office executives, four coaches and five players from eight different teams to better understand just how they think the Chiefs got here.
The paradoxes that unfolded help explain, well, why, the Chiefs are so hard to explain.
To change or not to change? That is the Chiefs’ answer
As 32 NFL teams search each year to accomplish what 31 of them will not, they’ll seek to determine: Are we better off chasing consistency or constant evolution? Are we more likely to win through obvious schematic and personnel answers or if we take a risk?
Already the answers to those questions will frustrate teams trying to emulate the Chiefs.
More than a dozen training camp conversations painted a picture of a Kansas City team with a consistent leadership foundation but dynamic strategy. The answer to the above questions: The Chiefs do both.
Their offense benefits from continuity as Andy Reid and Mahomes enter their seventh year of marriage as play-caller and playmaker, Mahomes also mastering chemistry with tight end Travis Kelce for that entire period. The Chiefs defense benefits from six years and counting of Steve Spagnuolo’s leadership in an era when many Super Bowl-winning coordinators would have long ago bolted. Spagnuolo has designed and redesigned his roster around trenches stalwart Chris Jones.
And yet, despite those anchors, examine the Chiefs’ 2019 Super Bowl run and you’ll see a different vision than their 2023 Super Bowl run.
A once high-octane offense leading a good but not great defense has morphed into a smothering defense leading a less dynamic offense.
The transformation reminds Cleveland Browns general manager Andrew Berry of another perennial contender.
“You saw this a lot with New England, during the Belichick days, like how an organization is able to shift its identity around the coach and quarterback,” Berry told Yahoo Sports. “Usually what happens is people get to the Super Bowl and they think, ‘OK, well, this is just the formula. We’re gonna keep doing the same thing even when circumstances changed.’
“That’s probably what I’m most impressed with: That organization really had two different styles of team, or two different styles of roster, but they have the tentpoles.”
Mahomes is the top on-field tentpole that enables the change, Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski describing Mahomes as “scheme agnostic.” Defenders lament Mahomes’ ability to turn any wrecked play into an equal or better outcome, particularly when targeting Kelce.
“It may be something that people think is crazy or off script, but they practice it so much where it’s not really,” Chicago Bears cornerback Jaylon Johnson said. “Their script is off script.”
Credit goes also to Reid, who models and encourages that creativity. Mahomes said recently that he knows Reid, as one of the best coaches and play-callers of all time (Berry ventured that Reid is top four in each category), could be close-minded or strict in his coaching. He chooses not to be, instead searching tirelessly for the best structure to both guide and free his players.
“Andy’s been able to have success with different QBs that have been different shapes and sizes from different places,” Los Angeles Rams general manager Les Snead said. “He’s not someone that says ‘My scheme is a rectangle and I drafted a circle. Circle better become a rectangle.’
“He’s one of the top offensive minds in creativity and in keeping defenses off balance, applying pressures to make the defenders cover a lot of different geometry on that football field.”
Is the Chiefs’ recipe even replicable?
There’s a Chiefs culture that players across the league venerate and dread.
It’s a culture of clutch playmaking and rising to the occasion; a culture of believing you’re never out of it because for the last six years the Chiefs rarely have been. Put simply: Opponents believe the Chiefs’ winning is fueling more winning.
“It’s really hard to beat them because they just don’t know how to lose,” Los Angeles Chargers running back J.K. Dobbins said. “Some teams know how to lose. They don’t know how to lose.”
Opponents often feel like they can hang with the Chiefs for the better part of three quarters. But when the fourth quarter comes, Kansas City so often transcends its competition.
“There’s always that one play they can make in the blink of an eye,” Cincinnati Bengals offensive lineman Cody Ford said. “So if you get up on them, you can’t even think it’s over with.”
“Their script is off script.”Chicago Bears CB Jaylon Johnson
Johnson compares Mahomes to “standard quarterbacks,” whom defenses can beat by identifying their strength and neutralizing it. The problem applying that strategy to Kansas City: Nearly everything is Mahomes’ strength. So “you never really take it away,” the Bears cornerback said.
Such a strength has allowed general manager Brett Veach to let go of some pricey players and pair likely-good-anyway draft selections with a quarterback who can routinely make good players look great. Veach deserves credit for selecting Mahomes when nine teams passed on him, and the franchise’s leadership deserves credit for giving Mahomes a year to develop before he was expected to lead the team.
That plan, like the continued Chiefs trajectory, deserves credit for how leadership has aligned around it, executives say.
It’s easy to assume a generational talent like Mahomes would have thrived even in his first year. But Snead has seen quarterbacks whose rookie years stunted their ability to access their talent.
“It seems like he could have done it,” Snead said. “But maybe because he has the rare skill set of thriving off schedule, maybe he would have relied on that too much as a rookie and that would have a little bit put him in harm’s way or something.
“You just never know how that compounds over time.”
What the league mostly does know: The Chiefs’ recipe, however amorphous and however paradoxical, has compounded over time to great effect.
Perhaps there is no way to truly identify just one difference-making ingredient. And without all the pieces, some NFL teams wonder if they’re better off trying not to replicate the Chiefs’ formula at all as they instead discover their own.
In the meantime, they’ll keep trying to thwart the seemingly unthwartable. Offenses will try to overcome the Chiefs’ swarming defensive line while defenses try to stop everything but Mahomes when they can’t stop him.
“It honestly doesn’t matter who they line up out there, he’s going to run around and make plays around us regardless,” Pittsburgh Steelers safety DeShon Elliott said. “Backyard football, but hey, it works for them. Got to be able to minimize the big plays.
“Minimize the big plays and stop the run – then you have a chance at least.”