The Kansas City Chiefs have been the dominant team in recent years: in the playoffs every year, in the Super Bowl five times, and won three times. This is over. And now superstar Mahomes will also be missing for a long time.
Supported by two supervisors, Patrick Mahomes limped into the locker room. The Kansas City Chiefs not only missed the NFL playoffs for the first time in a decade with their 13:16 loss to the Los Angeles Chargers. The dominant team in the National Football League in recent seasons also has to cope with the months-long absence of its superstar quarterback with a torn cruciate ligament. After three Super Bowl victories since 2020, is the Chiefs era finally over?
For the first time in Mahomes’ professional career, his team is no longer active in the most important phase of the season. And the 30-year-old will not be playing for his fourth Super Bowl ring on the outskirts of San Francisco in February, but will be working in rehab for a comeback next season.
“I don’t know why this had to happen and I’m not going to lie and say it doesn’t hurt,” Mahomes wrote on social media hours after the game. All he can do now is trust in God and attack every day. He ended his short message with the words: “I will come back stronger.”
What’s next for Kelce?
The Chiefs know their way around comebacks. The team’s unwillingness to give up took them to the Super Bowl five times in the past six seasons, and tight end Travis Kelce was able to call it a party night three times on the microphone.
But after this season, the fiancé of pop superstar Taylor Swift has to ask himself whether the best years are long past and whether the wedding next summer would not be the right occasion to end his career. His contract is expiring; he recently announced that he wanted to make a decision by spring. He didn’t want to talk, “we do that during the week,” he said, according to US media.
Kelce’s 70 yards gain against the Chargers was a team best, but he probably won’t reach the 1,000-yard mark this season either – as he did in the previous two seasons. His five touchdowns so far are more than last season, when he was only allowed to celebrate three times in the main round. In the three seasons before that, the now 36-year-old recorded twelve, nine and eleven touchdowns.
End of an era or just a brief snapshot?
Whether the Chiefs’ dominant phase is over or they make it and, like the New England Patriots under Tom Brady, come back after a short phase of weakness, will be a dominant topic in the NFL in the coming months. For now, however, the Chiefs are a standard team with shattered dreams – without a starting quarterback, with three more or less meaningless games remaining in the season and lots of question marks.
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The Chiefs will be led the rest of this season by Gardner Minshew, who took over for Mahomes and couldn’t do anything anymore. His last pass went towards Kelce, but ended up in the arms of the opponent. Kelce was not to blame, no one wanted to blame Minshew either – the action was more hope than anything else – and yet the action may have ended not only the Chiefs’ playoff series, but also the Kelce era.
It seems more realistic that Mahomes will return to his former glory after his cruciate ligament tear. Courage should give the playmaker a parallel with the best quarterback in football history: Brady also tore his cruciate ligament in his ninth NFL season after three Super Bowl victories. He then returned – and won four more titles in the NFL.
dpa/mel
