KANSAS CITY, Mo. _ Clad in yet another of his seemingly limitless supply of Tommy Bahama shirts, Chiefs coach Andy Reid on Friday night suddenly materialized on a Zoom video call conducted from the makeshift war room in his basement as nimbly as if he'd been doing it this way forever.
Speaking before the Chiefs made their third pick in the NFL draft, he gushed over their first two choices, LSU running back Clyde Edwards-Helaire and Mississippi State linebacker Willie Gay, but also raved about the technology enabling an evidently smooth process despite the bizarre scene provoked by the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
"Within being smart and safe, we'd all like to be able to get back and get things back to normal," he said. "But that might take a little bit. And if it does, we keep pounding it out the best we can and we're always going to try to maximize that with a positive attitude."
If that sounds like a mere platitude, it also has conviction and credibility behind it. The statement speaks to Reid's underappreciated adaptability, a trait as or more crucial to his success as his renowned dependability, but it reflects something more tangible bubbling in the wake of the franchise's first Super Bowl triumph in 50 years.
With so much uncertainty looming over everything from offseason training programs to even whether a full schedule can be played this season, no NFL team is better contoured and equipped for the unpredictability and haze than this one is.
And we could have said that before the Chiefs added Edwards-Helaire and Gay, dynamic talents Reid says "bring things that are going to help us and have a chance to help us quickly."
Maybe so. Probably so, even.
But on the premise that it remains to be seen how and when they and third-round pick Lucas Niang (an offensive lineman from TCU) and the rest drafted Saturday will make the transition from college and learn the systems and fit in until they actually put on a Chiefs uniform, let's stick with the more evident data.
In a league constantly in flux, in a time of broader chaos, the Chiefs are the essence of constancy and primed for prosperity. In many ways, they seem almost distinctly built for this even as the NFL is trying to sort out a variety of contingencies for what's ahead.
Starting with Patrick Mahomes, the reigning supreme quarterback in the universe no matter what anyone else says or thinks, and a galaxy of playmaking stars like Travis Kelce and Tyreek Hill and Chris Jones and Tyrann Mathieu, the Chiefs at this stage will return 20 of 22 starters from a nucleus that has room to grow ... and that started talking dynasty within minutes after their 31-20 victory over San Francisco in Super Bowl LIV.
That relative youth hints at years of potential ahead and suggests the possibility that the breakthrough will prompt not complacency but resolve for more, Chiefs owner Clark Hunt said in a Zoom call with reporters Saturday morning. These aren't players apt to sag after chasing a ring forever, Hunt said, adding that he believes they are hungry for more because of it.
They will be further animated by Reid's remarkable and ever-evolving connection with Mahomes. And they will be further reinforced by the fact that virtually every coach returns, including coordinators Eric Bieniemy, Steve Spagnuolo and Dave Toub _ surely a rarity when it comes to the staffs of defending Super Bowl winners.
Oh, and then there's the architect of so much of this, general manager Brett Veach (and his staff), who in his previous role implored the Chiefs to draft Mahomes. He has since boosted the roster with acquisitions such as Mathieu and Frank Clark and Sammy Watkins and learned to finesse, if not downright tame, the salary-cap beast.
When it was suggested this all seems to bode well for any challenges that could be posed by a truncated offseason or shortened regular season, Reid first joked about taking the first part of the word truncated.
"Sometimes we feel like we're in a trunk right now," he said.
More seriously, he casually accepted the notion that having people "who kind of know what you're doing and how you go about business" helps, highlighting Veach and his staff toiling endlessly to try to "keep as much of the team together as you possibly can with this crazy cap stuff that you've got to deal with."
For his part, Hunt acknowledged he had been skeptical of the franchise's ability to bring back so many.
But it's not just the personnel that they've worked to preserve and further cultivate. It's a culture and a chemistry that Reid has instilled all along since arriving after the 2012 season but that clearly was percolating on another level last year.
"Just creating that synergy and that energy, it really helps you, especially at this time of the year," guard Laurent Duvernay-Tardif said in late December. "You feel that you can sometimes give energy to somebody who needs it, or you feed off of somebody else."
So that's the incubator Edwards-Helaire, Gay, Niang and the rest of the class picked Saturday will step into: a room of champions following the compelling leadership of Mahomes and Mathieu on either side of the ball.
"That's why you bring in guys like Tyrann Mathieu," Veach said. "Those guys are glue guys."
How much last season will stick can't be known.
Even with minimal changes, no team dynamics are exactly the same year-in and year-out. Injuries and simple quirks of fortune always are an X-factor. And so is the idea that the Chiefs now are the marquee team in the game with all the envy and targeting that confers and that no one would have any other way.
"It's obviously what we've worked, really, for five decades to do, is to get back to the top ... and to be the team that other teams and their fans aspire to be," Hunt said.
Moreover, there are other reasons it's hard to repeat: By design, Super Bowl champs face the presumptive hardest schedule in the NFL in 2020 and there is nothing automatic about regenerating and harnessing anew an optimal mindset.
"There's a possibility or a tendency to have a letdown after you win a championship, after you chase something for a long time," said Hunt, also noting the collective burn the Chiefs had last season after falling just short of the Super Bowl a year before. "That will be our challenge: coming back with the same desire and intensity we had last year."
Just the same, Hunt and Veach both said having so much in place could play to their favor.
And having so much in place certainly should give Chiefs fans ample reason to look forward to life getting back to normal in a new but strangely real world in which they've been transformed from long-suffering to having much reason to believe.
