Perspective in the Shadow of Losses
The Kansas City Chiefs' loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Super Bowl LV was unexpected. It stung deep throughout Chiefs Kingdom. Unfortunately, it was not the only loss that would resonate throughout Kansas City this week.
The Chiefs got whooped. Patrick Mahomes was running for his life from the opening snap and didn’t stop until late in the fourth quarter. He gave everything he had, on a torn plantar plate in his foot no less, and came up short. It was the worst showing from a Mahomes-led team since he took over as starter in 2018.
If you take anything away from this game, it should be that this is a team sport. Despite the fact we all think Mahomes can put on his cape and lead the team to victory every time out, it won’t always happen that way.
The good news? They do have that guy here for at least 10 more years. They should be able to build a contender around him, year-in and year-out. The Chiefs still have a great core coming back and are currently the odds-on favorite to win next year’s Super Bowl.
This is how it is going to be for a while, Kansas City. It won’t always be roses, as we know from this past week. However, with the losses, there will be victories. And even in defeat, you can take away positives.
Think back to a time, not long ago, when the Kansas City Chiefs hadn’t won a playoff game in 20 years. The fact that the Hall of Fame combination of Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes, along with a slew of other talented front office and on-field personnel, made it so easy for us to expect Super Bowl appearances every year is something to behold. Let’s not take this for granted.
Putting things into perspective is critical and football is an activity that brings so many people together. After a very rough 2020 — and what seems to be a rough start to 2021 for many as well — the Chiefs brought so many people happiness in a difficult season of life.
However, football isn’t always the most important thing. This week, Kansas City lost two icons in the Chiefs community. Former head coach Marty Schottenheimer and former Kansas City Star Chiefs beat writer Terez Paylor both passed away this week.
Schottenheimer led the resurgence of the Kansas City Chiefs. He took them from a dumpster fire to a spot back on the map as a top-shelf NFL team after years of suffering through the 1970s and 1980s. Despite never getting to the Super Bowl, Schottenheimer’s legacy will live on throughout Chiefs Kingdom. His love for the game, the rivalries, the game-day atmosphere, it was all spearheaded by the Martyball era.
The death of Paylor has sent shockwaves through not only the Kansas City community but the entire sports media world.
Paylor will be remembered as the go-to guy for Chiefs news in the Andy Reid era. If there was breaking news from the Chiefs, personally, I was hesitant to believe it until I saw it had been fact-checked and sourced from Paylor. He was renowned among fans for his writing skills, but among his peers, both locally and nationally, for how he treated everyone with dignity and respect. He was a true professional and loved the game of football.
During a radio interview not long ago, he joked about how would talk about football for 24 hours a day if he didn’t need to eat and sleep. He was a Hall of Fame voter and loved talking about some of the current Chiefs and who he thought would one day be in Canton. He’d mention that Tyrann Mathieu and Tyreek Hill were inching closer with their resumes. Andy Reid, Travis Kelce, and Patrick Mahomes were essentially locks in Paylor’s mind.
I remember hearing him talk about how he couldn’t wait for the day where he could stump for Patrick Mahomes’ induction into Canton and he said it would be the easiest pitch he’d ever have to make for a player. If I had any pull among the Pro Football Writers of America, I’d stump for Paylor to be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame with the Dick McCann Memorial Award. He'd be the youngest winner of the award, and it would be well-deserved.
When you take a step back and think about the season, it was a reprieve from many of the negative things happening around us this past year. In the end, the loss of life from two giants in the Chiefs community hurts more than the loss of a game. Let’s remember their legacy and pursue each day with passion and a drive to strive to be better in every aspect of life.
