What to Learn from the Kansas City Chiefs

Over the last few years, my wife Janice and I have become NFL buffs, each with our own favorite team: mine, the Kansas City Chiefs; hers, the San Francisco 49ers. These two teams were similar in various ways: strong physical presence, star players, inventive play calls, excellent coaches at the top level, and an evident feeling of camaraderie and exuberant fun binding the group.

The quarterback situation was fascinating as well: Patrick Mahomes, the second best in the League after Josh Allen, could always be expected to do a little sorcery to pull the fourth quarter out of the first three; and Brock Purdy, Mr. Irrelevant, the 53rd player to make the team, revealed a talent and calm demeanor that led the squad to multiple victories.

Of course, I approved the Chiefs for keeping their name — unlike the timid Washington Redskins, who sold their soul to the social justice mob — and I was a full supporter of the Tomahawk Chop, which flouted the censorious indignation of the politically correct Left. What other team could transform the huddle into a jubilant “Ring around the Rosie” circle? For their part, following the terpsichorean hijinks of zany tight end George Kittle and Deebo Samuel with a boombox (or “bump box”) on his shoulder, the 49ers would dance onto the field as if in mock derision of the pompous League Commissioner. Both teams were great fun to watch.

After the subsequent disintegration of the 49ers, Janice switched her allegiance to the Detroit Lions, which can feature a first-rate wide receiver with a name like Amon-Ra St. Brown, who, besides his remarkable YAC (Yards After the Catch), also speaks German and French. Coached by Dan Campbell, who loves to gamble with the play-sheet, the group was always full of surprises. Unfortunately, injuries have shredded the team. As for myself, now that the Chiefs have scaled the heights of mediocrity, I have nowhere left to go, except to analyze the reasons for their ignominious collapse.

I could see the writing on the locker room wall last year and predicted the Chiefs would win only five games in the coming season. (They are currently 6 and 9.) The decline started — or at least seemed to — with the so-to-speak drafting of Taylor Swift, which clearly spelled the end of Travis Kelce’s career as the “best tight end” in football. He appeared far more interested in joining the far-Left A-list celebrity class than plucking footballs out of the air and hitting the ground face-first. His lack of production mirrored the forthcoming lackluster performance of a clearly distracted team. The sunlit uplands were soon to be a thing of the past.

One could see other areas of trouble to come aside from the curse of Taylor Swift. The running game was a disaster, the worst in the entire League, and could not survive even Mahomes’ trademark hoodoo. Isiah Pacheco and Kareem Hunt are straight-ahead halfbacks plunging into the thick of the opposing defensive line, sporting neither the bone-crushing battery of Derrick Henry nor the oil-slick elusiveness of Jahmyr Gibbs. Standout gains are beyond them. Rashee Rice and Xavier Worthy are highly competent receivers, but not glittering stars like A.J. Brown or Ja’Maar Chase. The offensive line is middle of the road, and a competent defense with tackle Chris Jones and strong corners still needed improvement. The overall picture didn’t look particularly good.

Kicker Harrison Butker’s highly controversial commencement speech at Benedictine College in May 2024, in which he praised women’s traditional homemaking role, led to calls for his release from the Chiefs and distancing statements from the NFL, but also gained support from only a few of his teammates, mainly Chris Jones and later on a rather tepid Mahomes. The glue binding the team was plainly deteriorating.

There seems to be trouble brewing at the front office and coaching staff as well. General manager Brett Veach has obviously enjoyed a stellar career, the team winning nine AFC West championships, five AFC Championships, and three Super Bowls under his leadership. But during the current trading session, when the Chiefs needed serious help, he made no moves at all, though he was rumored to be interested in various players who went on to improve other teams—one thinks of the Philadelphia Eagles acquiring top-notch end-rusher Jaelan Phillips from the Miami Dolphins for merely a 3rd round draft pick. When Veach had already failed to beef up the team’s sagging skill-and-muscle prospects in the last off-season, his professional lethargy was to be expected.

The coaching staff also looks like it has reached the dusk of its career. Running back coach Todd Pinkston, wide receiver coach Connor Embree, and offensive coordinator Matt Nagy together seem models of ineptitude and, so far as I can tell, have no business handling the offensive chores of a major NFL club. Their lack of position-smarts explains to some degree why the backs show no resourceful or ingenious maneuvers and the receivers often seem lost in the uninspiring maze of their meandering routes. The offense as a whole is regularly out to lunch. Defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo (Spag, as announcers affectionately call him) is regularly acknowledged as one of the best in his category, but he doesn’t have much to work with these days, in comparison with at least half the teams he must plan against.

Head coach Andy Reid is perhaps the major problem the Chiefs are now saddled with. Likeable, player-friendly, and often accounted something of a genius at his craft, he is now plainly approaching the twilight of his tenure. True, he no longer has the injured Patrick Mahomes to rely on and that may clarify why the team was recently smoked by the deplorable Tennessee Titans. The previous two losses to the Texans and the Chargers, however, showed Reid at his weakest, allowing Mahomes to run dead-end plays, especially against the Chargers when there was still a possibility of tying or winning the game. Reid’s deer-in-the-headlights expression as he watched the travesty play out in front of him indicated a man at the end of his professional tether. He looked catatonic. His best days are an immense distance behind him.

What the Chiefs require is not simply a rebuild but a complete makeover: a new and active general manager, new innovative coaches all the way across the board (except for Spag), a younger, more vital head coach, and a superb drafting process to find an effective running back, several stalwart linemen, a promising linebacker, one or two pass defenders of quality, and a young quarterback of assured talent to creditably spell Mahomes.

This is a recipe for excellence that would obviously take years to come to fruition on the field. It’s the price for continuing or at least eventual success. Regretfully, my impression is that the team will largely stay with what it has and what it presently is, currently dull, passive, unimaginative, wary of risk-taking, intent on preserving its privileged placeholders, without audacity and derring-do.

Football is a violent sport, but it is also subtle and calculated. Injuries are frequent, but so are spectacular plays and clever deceptions. Barring injuries, a winning football team calls for three basic criteria: a good roster, including two or three exceptional players; a spirit of brotherhood and brash good fun; and intelligence at all levels. The Chiefs were blessed for some years with a more than adequate complement of all three, but when intelligence fails, the other two components inevitably degenerate. The slew of problems the Chiefs could not resolve comes down to this: the breakdown of intelligence. This is what happened to the Kansas City Chiefs. Intelligent assessment of the situation has vanished, the former adventurousness has departed, and timorousness has set in like a wasting disease.

Such is the reason why dynasties sink and disappear: complacency, resting on laurels, and craven absence of smarts. Decency and selflessness are important, too, since pivotal actors are reluctant to surrender their sinecures even when they know that they are no longer capable of doing the job. Nevertheless, change must be made in the direction of intelligence, since intelligence and the willingness to follow its prescriptions are the formula for achievement and triumph. A shrewd general manager, smart coaches, and, of course, savvy scouts are the precondition for finding the best players and for fielding a champion. But the Tomahawk Chop has found another victim. The Chiefs are an example of a team losing its way because it failed to act alertly at a critical juncture. It takes a while, but then it happens abruptly. These are lessons for life.

One recalls the passage from Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. A character is asked how he went bankrupt. Slowly, he answers, then suddenly.

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