There was a minute there on Sunday, around 2 p.m. local time, when no one had to squint too hard to envision a torch passing at Arrowhead Stadium, between the resident powerhouse Chiefs and Shane Steichen’s upstart Colts.
The reigning AFC champions were down 20–9, facing second-and-10 from the Colts’ 17-yard line. Kareem Hunt took the handoff from Patrick Mahomes and, five yards downfield, Zaire Franklin fought through Chiefs LT Josh Simmons before corralling Hunt and stripping the ball as the two went to the ground. It was a borderline-impossible play by Franklin, the kind that has killed K.C. this year. Ex-Chief Charvarius Ward was there to dive on the ball.
Bottom line: These Chiefs have been through a lot. They’ve played a lot of games, been everyone’s big game, played on every day of the week and taken everyone’s best shot. If this were where the tank finally hit empty, everyone would’ve known why. And understood.
Instead, Kansas City summoned something the greatest champions have—an ability to maintain the mental toughness to understand the urgency of all these moments.
“That’s every game for us now,” captain and fifth-year linebacker Nick Bolton told me, on his way home from the stadium after the game. “We’ve lost five games already. Every game is huge for us. Everything is on the line. That’s the mindset we had the whole game. So I wouldn’t say, in that particular moment, we decided to up our juices a little bit and be a little bit better. It’s been the mindset.”
Trusting that their collective mindset would eventually lead the Chiefs out of the wilderness of NFL mediocrity paid off in a huge way Sunday.
To me, the significance of Kansas City’s 23–20 win over the Colts wasn’t really that they beat an 8–2 team that came into Arrowhead, like everyone does, looking for validation. It’s how this victory happened—in a way that delivered a clear message: Dismiss this flawed edition of the Chiefs’ dynasty at your own risk.
Bolton and the Chiefs responded to that critical fumble by sticking to their script of completely suffocating a great operation that was determined to show how far it had come. Here is a breakdown of the numbers after the Hunt fumble, through the 14:48 remaining in regulation, and all 8:03 of overtime leading up to Harrison Butker’s 27-yard game-winning field goal.
• The Chiefs outgained the Colts 231–18.
• Kansas City averaged 5.9 yards on its 39 plays, while the Colts averaged 1.5 yards on their 11 plays.
• The Kansas City defense held the Colts without a first down over that 22 minutes, 51 seconds of action.
• Over the same period, the Chiefs churned out 13 first downs, and put together scoring drives of 56, 87 and 81 yards to win the game.
Factor in the drive that led to the fumble that started all of this into the equation, and the Chiefs held a 291–18 edge in yards from scrimmage after a Michael Badgley field goal put Indianapolis up 20–9 late in the third quarter.
That, by the way, was after the Colts got the better of the Chiefs for more than two hours, and with Kansas City having gone 0–5 in one-score games this year. All of which would probably be enough for a lesser group to slip from its foundation.
“Obviously, close games haven’t gone our way,” Bolton said. “In situational football, at the end of games, both offense, defense and special teams, we haven’t been [the same] as we have in the past. This week was a different narrative—and we found ways to execute when the game called for us to. Situational-wise, we are working to fix that and get these kinds of wins in the back half of this year.”
Then, there’s the amount of damage the Chiefs have incurred over the past six years. They have played 19 playoff games over that span, an NFL record. They have played in five Super Bowls in six years, something even the great Patriots teams never did (the closest New England came to that was five in eight years). And all this came with the 17-game schedule instituted in the third of those six seasons.
Chiefs are still standing
For the veterans on the team, that’s a lot of high-leverage situations, targets on your back and clips emptied by other teams in their best effort to knock off the NFL’s kings. And that’s why it’s impressive that they’re still standing, which probably explains how and why they got to the top of the mountain in the first place.
As Bolton sees it, it’s as much about who is in the building as it is about what they’re trying to accomplish. The Chiefs find players who love being at work, and the staff leans into that, tailoring the environment to those players so that, regardless of result, the effort and commitment to the group never fall off.
“They do a great job of keeping your body and mind fresh,” Bolton says. “Making work fun even if we aren’t winning. And everybody is playing for each other, for your brothers. Honestly, the team [record] stuff doesn’t cross your mind. You just want to go out there and execute the game plan. We go to war with these guys, through training camp on, and we got a new teams, guys who haven’t won a championship.
“So we understand the opportunity we have. We’re just trying to make every week count, every play count. We don’t worry about fatigue—everybody’s tired. Nobody’s playing football at 100% at this point in the year.”
Bolton added, “We’ll find a way to win the one, that’s what we always say. We’ll win the one play. The one drive, the one series.”
‘We’ll find a way to win the one’
That happened this week in a manner reminiscent of last season’s Chiefs, who went 12–0 in one-score games, including the playoffs.
It was Bolton breaking up a pass to force the first three-and-out after the Hunt fumble. It was staying onside on a Daniel Jones’s hard count on fourth-and-4 with 4:52 left. It was the wildly talented Rashee Rice seemingly coming of age with a handful of big catches, including one for 47 yards and another to convert fourth down on the game-tying drive. It was Drue Tranquill dumping Jonathan Taylor for a loss on third-and-1 in overtime.
And then it was Mahomes, as it always is, in the consequential moments, hitting Xavier Worthy and Rice for big gains on the last drive (one for 31 yards to convert a third down, and another for 21 yards to put the Chiefs in field goal range.)
“That’s our leader,” Bolton said. “We rally around Pat.”
Going forward they have more than just their quarterback to rally around.
As Bolton drove home, he planned to give himself a few more hours to enjoy the win, with a plane ride to Dallas for Thanksgiving less than 72 hours away. It’s a lot to think about, and there’s been a lot the Chiefs have had to endure. But, clearly, they know the route they need to take to get where they want to go. So, yes, Bolton now sees a world where what happened Sunday is only the beginning of a path to another Super Bowl.
“A lot of the guys still in the building, the coaches are still the same, the schemes haven’t changed that much, so yeah, I have the utmost faith in getting the thing right, finding a way to string wins together. But our mindset has shifted. Coming into the season, we wanted to win a championship. Our mindset now, let’s win the one, win this next game, see if we can stack a few more in a row. Our full attention is on Dallas. …
“We’re not worried about a championship now. Our goal now is the playoffs. After, we’ll figure out what it looks like and how to get back to the big dance.”
That makes this year like many others for the Chiefs. And—even at 6–5, with this team’s warts and all—it also makes getting back there totally and wholly realistic.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Dismiss This Flawed Edition of the Chiefs’ Dynasty at Your Own Risk.
