Patrick Mahomes touched the ball last. No, that's not quite accurate.
The left upright actually touched the ball last, if we are keeping score.
The Kansas City Chiefs survived a second half comeback by the Los Angeles Chargers to win the AFC West for the ninth straight year with a last second field goal that put them ahead 19-17.
Third-string kicker Matthew Wright caromed a 31-yard field goal off the left upright and through for a victory that secured the Chiefs’ 15th straight win in a one-score game over the last two seasons.
The latest narrow escape for Kansas City, which is 10-0 this season in one-score games, was their third walk-off field goal this season—by three different kickers!
The two-time defending Super Bowl champions improved to 12-1 in their pursuit of a historic three-peat. Though it is debatable how good this iteration of the team is, it is undeniable that they know how to win.
Seriously, all they do is win! The template is so threadworn at this point it often feels as though the games are following a slight variation on the same old script; a Hallmark holiday movie perhaps?
A Hallmark holiday movie will never show you the skeletons in the closet. That fantasy is part of their appeal.
Whether its super fan Chiefsoholic robbing a string of banks, receiver Rashee Rice fleeing the scene of a pileup he caused racing, the star quarterback's cringe-inducing brother, Jackson Mahomes, sexually assaulting servers, or the coach's son, Britt Reid on a bender, running a motorist off the road—permanently injuring the brain of a five-year-old girl, these Chiefs are not as lovable as Jake from State Farm would like you to believe.
Anyone remember how much bellyaching the Chiefs did when a pivotal flag went against them last season?
“Usually I get a warning before something like that happens in a big game,” Kansas City coach Reid said after a game the Chiefs lost last season after a touchdown was negated by penalty. The officials correctly pointed out that Kadarious Toney lined up off-sides.
"A bit embarrassing in the National Football League for that to take place. I didn’t have a protractor out there, but a bit embarrassing." said Reid.
Sounds like Reid was inadvertently copping to some preferential treatment by the referees. I don't think that other coaches get a warning in advance of a penalty being called. Which might be more embarrassing for the league.
Add all of that up and ask yourself: Why would anyone who isn't a Kansas City fan cheer for the Chiefs? The Patrick Mahomes magic of throwing the ball all over the field? That has been gone for years; supplanted by a stout defense coordinated by a maniacal genius who is content not being a head coach again.
The point is, like most things, the media is the last one to arrive at the party: Americans pulling for the quicksilver team who once promised to move the game generationally forward via strategic innovation and athletic superiority now has us cheering for whoever plays the Chiefs.
The 2018 Chiefs that unleashed an unproven, unorthodox, and unflinching kid named Patrick Mahomes on the league have turned into a bunch of smug, privileged, whiners who are on our screens too damn often. To quote Harvey Dent, you either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain.
Were the champs always this insufferable, or has the winning painted a target on their backs?
Or perhaps the saturation of coverage they receive as three-time champions has soured the casual fan?
The cultural behemoth, or kingdom, if you prefer, is so overburdened that we are getting two separate Christmas movies produced in the Hallmark house style loosely based on the jet-setting romance between tight end Travis Kelce and pop star Taylor Swift!
One of them titled, Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story is centered on a character who helps run a family business (a Chiefs merch store), who credits the Chiefs for her entire existence because her grandparents met at a game. Her Fan of the Year campaign rests on the detail that her family is in possession of a magical Christmas hat that helps the Chiefs win the Super Bowl; so long as the hat is worn on Christmas.
My first thought was: Didn't the Raiders beat them last Christmas?
My second thought was: Did the Chiefs organization knowingly sign off on a script acknowledging that they are wielding magical powers??
Turns out the magic hat was given to her grandfather decades ago by a Salvation Army Santa Claus directly before the Chiefs won Super Bowl IV in 1970, but then it was lost—just like Sauron's ring!—for 50 years until a customer named Bilbo (not really) brings it into the family store as a vintage item!
Once the dark magic is returned to the grounds celebrating/mocking the indigenous tribes who once lived there before they were exterminated (named Arrowhead Stadium in real life), the Chiefs become the dynastic franchise that Santa—just move a few letters and it spells Satan!—always intended them to be.
From that point on the Chiefs Kingdom reigns without compunction. Or you would be led to believe as much.
The State Farms ads. The Kelce brothers podcast. The way NBC's Chris Collinsworth describes a 15-yard in-breaking route as if Patrick Mahomes had just cured cancer. The questionable officiating, and by the same measure, the way the Chiefs react should the calls ever go against Kansas City.
The Taylor Swift luxury box camera; documenting her touchdown celebrations with Brittany Mahomes—which scans about as affably as Marie Antoinette hosting a haute banquet in 1789.
On the eve of the French Revolution, what you ate was an expression of both status and wealth. Though her country was starving, the French monarchy continued to feast upon roast duck, fillet of sole cooked in champagne with truffles and mushrooms, cheese, chocolates, pastries of every shape and size, and, gulp, gelatin.
Yes, it was the aristocracy that popularized Jell-O. Though they obviously did not call it that.
Gelatin, a protein extract derived from collagen in connective tissues and bones, has been around since the 1400s. For centuries gelatin, and gelatin salads, or aspics, were only served to the upper crust as a staple of haute cuisine. Because of the time and resources necessary for separating it from the animal sources—hours of boiling down before it “sets” (goes from liquid to gel) — only the extremely wealthy could task their large kitchen staffs to make it.
But by the mid-1900s all of that had changed. The Industrial Revolution saw the invention, and patenting of powdered gelatin in 1845. The middle class eventually came around and began to dabble in aspics of their own after a series of magazine ads promoted a new product called "Jell-O" in 1902.
Take a look at this recipe for "Perfection Salad" submitted by Mrs. John E. Cook, of New Castle, PA. in 1904.
Jell-O's popularity reached its apex in the 1950s when culinary technology gave homemakers more time and license to create dishes that could live up to the immense pressure postwar women faced to embody the American dream woman; perfect mother; perfect wife; who, while maintaining a spotless suburban home prepares three meals a day.
Which is how we ended up with shrimp and mayonnaise congealed in a prism of lime Jell-O.
Speaking of.
Should you ever be asked to deliver a commencement speech, if you decide to romanticize The Handmaid's Tale, you might want to test the material on some friends first.
Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker made off-field headlines for his speech at Benedictine College last summer for calling Pride Month a deadly sin and telling the graduating women of the class that should become mothers and housewives rather than pursue a career.
Though Butker was excoriated (see the Chargers Sims schedule release video) for outing his own misogynistic views, and rightly so, his teammates and the NFL had to answer for them, too.
Kickers are an integral part of any team, and Butker has been an outstanding one, especially in the playoffs, but with their proven ability to transform clanging field goals from third-stringers into victories through the use of black magic do the Chiefs really need these distractions?
Mahomes was conciliatory when he was askedn about Butker's speech, saying that while he "didn't necessarily agree with" Butker's views, he knows that Butker is "a great person."
Shilling his antiquated version of an Americana in which men dominate public life while women are relegated to domestic lives, and neutralized as a threat to men’s status and ambitions didn't cost Butker anything professionally.
You could argue that the chord he struck resonates deeply with a large swath of the country. See the latest election results, or Supreme Court rulings, or you could simply see that his jersey sales spiked after the speech.
Butker has been on injured reserve since injuring his knee last month but should return in time for the playoffs. And even if Kansas City is protected by a Protego spell from regression in their kicking game we can still hope that he suffers some regression in the kitchen.
What recipe could possibly be more apropos than Perfection Salad?
Another jello mold, made with hotdogs water.
That idiotic Hallmark story, I'll always think of Richard Christie's hat that was passed around on the Howard Stern show. Now buried somewhere in the brambles. "Oh My"
Another great article