KANSAS CITY, Mo. — An anguished time ago in a galaxy that suddenly appears far, far away, the Kansas City Chiefs were the heartbreak kids of the NFL. At times, they seemed condemned to stay stranded in the gloom that comes from wrenching, occasionally even slapstick playoff losses.
There are a zillion ways to simmer that all down to its finest elements, but perhaps this is the most succinct:
For a 48-year period after winning Super Bowl IV, the Chiefs were 4-16 in playoff games and maybe sometimes you wondered if it was even worth having hope just to get emotionally body-slammed again.
That was then, though, and this is now: In the AFC Championship Game on Sunday at Arrowhead Stadium, the Chiefs jackhammered the Buffalo Bills 38-24 to romp to a second straight Super Bowl.
The victory was a franchise-record fifth straight in the postseason, and it keeps the Chiefs on trajectory to become the first team to repeat as Super Bowl champ since the 2003-04 Patriots. (That encore was at the expense, incidentally, of Andy Reid's Philadelphia Eagles.)
And it was delivered from a variety of angles, including thorny defense, yet another prolific game for the Travis Kelce-Tyreek Hill tandem and a redemptive performance by Mecole Hardman after a hideous misplay early helped put the Chiefs in a 9-0 bind.
Or what might have seemed a bind, anyway, if you weren't cognizant of Patrick Mahomes and the resolute, resilient body of work that explains the transformation in the fortunes of a franchise that now is 6-1 in the postseason with him as a starter.
Never mind that Mahomes left the field last week against Cleveland after his legs buckled when he tried to stand up following a hit, automatically casting him into the NFL's concussion protocol. Or that he had labored with turf toe in that game. And that it wasn't clear he'd be able to return until Friday, when he delivered the news that he'd passed all protocols.
Asked when he knew Mahomes would return, and be himself, for that matter, safety Tyrann Mathieu laughed and said he knew in the locker room after the Browns game.
"He had that look in his eye, like, 'Don't forget about me,' " Mathieu said.
Even while many worried that look in his eye said something else, Mahomes stayed diligent and disciplined with the protocols. And he got treatment for what Reid called "an amazing-looking thing" in the form of his "black and blue" toe after the Cleveland game.
Beyond that, as Mathieu put it, "he's a gamer" who tends to rise above whatever's put before him.
Indeed, Mahomes simply resumed his postseason default stance as a force of nature, completing 29 of 38 passes for 325 yards and three touchdowns as the Chiefs won for the 25th time in his last 26 starts.
"It was just trusting each other," Mahomes said amid the postgame victory celebration. "The best thing about this team is we believe in each other."
It sure helps to have something real and spectacular to believe in, of course, in this young gem such a long time coming that his father wasn't even born the last time the Chiefs had won a Super Bowl.
"I'm an old guy who's seen a couple pretty good quarterbacks, and I just keep going, 'This guy seems to amaze me a little bit more every game,'" Reid said. "I'm proud of the way he handles it most of all," a reference to admirable personal traits.
Now Mahomes and the Chiefs seek to take the next step at Super Bowl LV in Tampa Bay — where the Buccaneers will become the first team in the Super Bowl era to play the game in its own stadium in their first year with Tom Brady.
The last time the Chiefs met Brady in the playoffs, of course, was the AFC Championship Game against the Patriots two years ago that became the first of three straight home conference title games for the Chiefs vying for the Lamar Hunt Trophy that never had so much as been in Kansas City before.
Now the trophy's presence — and retention — is becoming about as routine as the Chiefs winning the AFC West, which they've done five times in a row.
That last postseason scene against Brady was memorable for, alas, the Dee Ford offsides that offset a chance to put away the game, a fateful coin toss and Brady's dissection of the Chiefs defense in the 37-31 overtime win.
But piercing as that loss was, there was a different sort of aura to it than the faith-crushing catalog of postseason misery that preceded it. In the aftermath of Mahomes' first full season as a starter, you had the sense that this was the beginning of a new era — and not just because Brady visited Mahomes in the locker room afterward to conjure a figurative passing of the torch.
(After the game Sunday, Mahomes reiterated his apprecation for Brady's gesture and expressed his eagerness to go up against the best in what he jokingly called Brady's 150th Super Bowl.)
That game became the impetus for a purge of the defense, from coordinator (Bob Sutton to Steve Spagnuolo) to scheme to a personnel overhaul that included the pivotal additions of Mathieu and Frank Clark.
You know what came next: With the excruciatingly exhilarating flourish of an unprecedented three straight postseason rallies from double-digit deficits, the Chiefs won their first Super Bowl in 50 years.
Then they won a franchise record 14 games in the regular season, including victories at Buffalo (26-17) and Tampa Bay (27-24) and fended off the Browns 22-17 last week to improve to 5-1 in postseason games started by Mahomes.
Make that 6-1 as the Chiefs reprised the escape that defined last postseason.
This began wretchedly with the Bills taking that 9-0 lead after a sequence featuring a rare Hill drop downfield and Hardman's ghastly fumbled punt that teed up the Bills at the Kansas City 3 yard line.
But even as some fans might have flinched at the brutal start, it was easy to imagine that the Chiefs themselves would be unfazed.
You could almost see tangible evidence of that as a mortified Hardman retreated to the bench. Surely among others but in this case captured by a camera, Mahomes promptly went to him and offered encouragement that along the lines of "keep your head up" with the point being he'd be needed.
Then Hardman validated the vote of confidence. He scored the Chiefs first touchdown on a 3-yard pass from Mahomes and set up another with a 50-yard run that was the longest in franchise postseason history.
With Mahomes completing back-to-back passes with defenders virtually draped around him, next thing you know the Chiefs scored 21 points in 10:04 of elapsed clock time on drives of 80, 82 and 77 yards and seized a 21-12 halftime lead.
Meanwhile, Hill atoned plenty the rest of the way, too. He finished with nine catches for 172 yards, 71 one of which came on a third-quarter reception made possible by his jet-serpentining perhaps 100 yards or more to get there.
That set up Mahomes' 1-yard underhand TD pass to Kelce to make it 31-15. Explosive as Buffalo has been, that didn't necessarily mean it was over. But moments later, early in the fourth quarter, Rashad Fenton intercepted Allen at the Kansas City 12 and returned it 30 yards to set things in motion for Mahomes' 5-yard TD pass to Kelce that made it 38-15 and effectively ended it.
Just the latest chapter in the new world order that only a few years ago would have seemed preposterous. And that somehow now seems like just the start.
"Our goal from the beginning of the season was to win the Super Bowl," Mahomes said, "not to get to it."
