A forlorn Josh Allen summed it up best after his Buffalo Bills lost to the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC Championship Game two weeks ago.
“To win the championship, you’ve got to beat the champs, and we didn’t do that today,” the quarterback explained.
He’s right. The Chiefs are the champs — the two-time defending champs, that is — and to win the championship, you have to go through them and knock them out. And ever since 2022, no one has been able to do it in games that matter. They are going for a Super Bowl-record three straight championships, something that the mini-dynasties that have come before them such as the Green Bay Packers, Pittsburgh Steelers, Dallas Cowboys, San Francisco 49ers, Miami Dolphins and even Tom Terrific and Unbeatabke Bill and those New England Patriots have been unable to do.
That’s pretty rare air that awaits the Chiefs if they defeat the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl 59 on Sunday night in New Orleans.
And I think they will win. It may be by only three points again, but there will be less scoring than when the Chiefs edged the Eagles 38-35 two years ago to begin this Super Bowl winning streak. Let’s go with a final of 26-23 because the Chiefs aren’t scoring as many points these days, but they’re much better defensively as well.
The “experts” say the Eagles have better players — a better roster — though I would debate that. But what is not debatable is that the Chiefs have a better team. Like the aforementioned great teams down through the decades, they know how to win, they can play any kind of way to win, they make plays when they are there to be made, especially down the stretch when almost all of these games are won and lost, and they don’t beat themselves with silly mistakes such as pre-snap and post-play penalties.
And the most important part of all this is that they have the best quarterback in the NFL in Patrick Mahomes and the best head coach in Andy Reid. Those are the two most important spits on any football team. It’s a combination that’s almost impossible to beat, particularly when the stage is the biggest, the lights are the brightest and the stakes are the highest.
Yes, the Eagles are good — very good, in fact — and they could certainly win this game. But they won’t because they are not as complete as the Chiefs. For instance, their passing game leaves something to be desired.
And should the Chiefs indeed win, then all the naysayers who don’t know true excellence when they see it, and will never appreciate it, will say it’s because the refs wanted them to win and they simply got lucky.
Please.
Don’t embarrass yourself and join forces with that conspiracy theory bunch. Y’all are better — smarter — than that.
The Chiefs don’t get their due because they are from a media market in Kansas City that’s so small that it doesn’t have teams in the NBA and NHL. KC isn’t “cool,” whatever that means. It’s in the Midwest, in flyover country, where most of you reading this live. If the Chiefs were in New York, or Los Angeles, or Boston, or Miami, or Dallas, or San Francisco, then the media coverage would be 10 times what it is.
But it’s Kansas City, where the coach, quarterback and players are likable, really good people, in fact. No steady flow of police blotter material. You want scandal? Let’s go with the fact that the coach likes food almost as much as he likes football? Whoa! How salacious!!
Anyway, until the Kansas City Chiefs lose one of these — until the champs get dethroned — I’m going to keep picking them. It’s called common sense.
I know, call me crazy!
Steve King
