Are the Chiefs in their villain era?

It’s a label that’s been applied ad nauseam heading into the Super Bowl, by both fans and anti-fans of the long-dominant football team. The Kansas City juggernauts will face off against the Philadelphia Eagles in what will be the Chiefs’ fifth trip to the championship in six years. If they win, they’ll be the first NFL team in history to win three back-to-back Super Bowls.

Sounds exciting, right? In fact, just five years ago, Kansas City were overwhelmingly considered darlings of the NFL. So why has public sentiment turned against them so, er, swiftly? (Sorry.)

The answer really isn’t all just Taylor and Travis. In fact, just as it was when the Patriots were pop culture’s favorite antiheroes, the reasons for audiences’ growing animosity against the Chiefs are a lot more complicated than you might expect. Unlike the Patriots backlash, however, current pique against the Kansas City footballers intersects with a couple of larger unexpected social issues. Let’s break it down.

Factor No. 1: They really are that good

It’s no secret that fans easily turn to hating the dominant team in their respective sport. That holds true across sports and franchises, from the notoriety of the Patriots, to the Warriors in their divisive Kevin Durant era, to everyone’s perennial faves the Yankees — arguably the platonic ideal of a franchise that is hated largely for its longstanding success.

Like many of those other teams, the Chiefs’ incredible dominance didn’t come out of nowhere. In 2013, under their new hires, general manager John Dorsey and head coach Andy Reid, the franchise underwent what Pete Sweeney, the editor-in-chief of SB Nation’s Chiefs fan site Arrowhead Pride, called “one of the most unprecedented roster reversals and record reversals in NFL history.” This was a shift that further paid off when current Chiefs general manager Brett Veach, then a team scout, convinced Dorsey to draft Patrick Mahomes in 2017. Veach had followed — nay, obsessed over — Mahomes since the quarterback’s high school career, and his instincts immediately proved correct. Combine Mahomes’s offensive talent with the strategies of Reid and widely praised defensive coordinator Steven Spagnuolo, and you have a team that’s been dominating the league since 2020. In this season’s lineup alone, we have a cadre of attention-grabbers, starting with the QB:

• Patrick Mahomes, quarterback: At 29, Mahomes is the first quarterback under age 30 in NFL history to start in four Super Bowls. As a kid, Mahomes grew up in pro locker rooms with his father, a professional baseball player, and learned how to be serious about his game early on. His claim to legend status lies in his dramatic style of play — think crazy throws, big dashes, effortless conversions — and his ability to engineer wild, literally game-changing, comeback wins. His versatility shows in the sheer number of records he’s racked up in a short time frame, including things that don’t even seem real, like being the fastest player to reach 25,000 career passing yards while somehow also breaking rushing touchdown records as well.
• Travis Kelce, tight end: The tight end is a role that doubles as both wide receiver and offensive lineman, and Kelce is really, really good at it — so good he had 1,000 receiving yards a season for

  © Vox