Arrowhead Pride
What is Arrowhead Pride Premier? Arrowhead Pride Premier is our tri-weekly newsletter, one that provides analysis and exclusive insights directly from Arrowhead Stadium, delivered straight to your inbox. Below is a preview of the latest edition.
BY PETE SWEENEY
For the third consecutive season – and the fifth time in six years – the Kansas City Chiefs are AFC Champions. Their 32-29 victory over the Buffalo Bills Sunday night sends them to New Orleans, where they will take on the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LIX.
The stakes have already been well-documented.
No team in NFL history has ever won three straight Super Bowls. And, in fact, no back-to-back champion has ever made it to the clinching game. The Chiefs now own that opportunity.
Over the next two weeks, the national media will provide countless reasons as to why Philadelphia may stop Kansas City. Ahead of that, I’ll remind you that is a good thing.
The more people doubt the Chiefs, the more they continue to prove their critics wrong.
With that initial message in mind, here are the three things I think following yet another historic win.
I think what makes the Chiefs inevitable is their unparalleled ability to win the close games.
With their win on Sunday evening, Kansas City has now won an NFL-record 17 straight one-score games. To be clear: that’s no fluke.
“It’s because it’s everybody,” said quarterback Patrick Mahomes. “It’s not just one side of the football. If you look [Sunday], obviously, the offense played well, but we didn’t score that touchdown down there at the end, and the defense stopped Josh [Allen], one of the best quarterbacks in the league in a critical situation to give us a chance to run the time out.
“It takes everybody, and we’ve done it so many different ways now that we just have full trust – the coaching staff trusting the players, players trusting the coaches – and we go out an execute our job. When you’ve done it over and over again, it becomes habit. Obviously, we would want to win by more, but I think the regular season, winning all those close games has prepared us for moments like [Sunday].”
Mahomes played well – and what I see in him is a willingness to do whatever it takes for the Chiefs to emerge victorious. That’s usually the difference in all these tight victories.
Sunday called for him to use his legs more than usual – and he did so with such effectiveness that he outproduced Allen on the ground and scored two rushing touchdowns.
“They always give me options to pull the ball and run it,” said Mahomes. “[The Bills] were playing man coverage a lot of the day, and they were putting a lot of attention on Travis [Kelce], and so with them pushing that safety and pushing at your linebackers to Travis, it opened up different lanes for me to run, and I was able to run...
