Football is a game where explosion and composure are blended in an almost incomparable way. I had a coach early on in my illustrious football career that had a Division II ceiling that said the game must be played with a "controlled rage". I've always felt that fitting—that in a sport where you are pissed off, banged up, and tired as hell the entire time you're playing, you have to keep all of those things in check and keep your mental game at if not above the level that you're bringing physically.
Every athlete in the NFL has mastered this to an extent. You don't get to that level without being able to do it first as a kid, then at the high school and college levels, and ultimately you have to possess the ability to be mentally composed and acute enough to present yourself well to talent evaluators and front office members at the NFL level to even have a chance to take their money. Even when players seem to lack composure, they still have better control of their emotions than most based on what they're doing. It's just that, at times, the competitive juices flow a little too fast for some of these guys to handle.
That's the rational explanation for why NFL players act like babies sometimes. The real reason? Because Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs have wrapped several teams into a mental pretzel over the course of the last six seasons, leaving them in cognitive and emotional shambles along the way as they have established the league's newest dynasty. The obvious culprits—the Chargers, Raiders, and Broncos—have tried to combat the effects of Mahomes-ism by building their rosters with the intent of deconstructing what the Chiefs have built. Those efforts have been nothing short of futile thus far. I hate to break it to Broncos fans, but Bo Nix being the answer is less likely than me winning the Powerball jackpot.
It's not surprising to see less successful franchises lash out when things continually don't go their way. But when perennial contenders start to let their emotions get the best of them, it's time to get the popcorn out. We've been there before. Remember the middle of last year when Mahomes and Andy Reid were calling out the refs after a rare offensive offsides call against the Chiefs in their game against Buffalo? Hey, it happens. Even the most composed lose their cool from time to time. But what the Chiefs rivals at the top of the AFC have on display at the moment is comical, to say the least.
Let's start with the Chiefs' opponent this week, the Cincinnati Bengals. This is nothing new. The Bengals burst onto the scene in 2021 by taking a regular season game from the Chiefs late and then knocking them out of the playoffs in the AFC title game later that postseason. From there, the trash talk and slights started not only from Bengals players but from arguably the most delusional fan base on NFL Twitter. But delusion in Cincinnati isn't contained just to its fan base; even the team's official app is currently hanging onto the now-distant success they experienced years ago against the Chiefs.
When I first saw this, my first thought was obviously, "This can't be real!" Sadly my rationale was incorrect. We're talking about a rematch of a game that is currently the fourth most recent matchup between the two. Hell, it's not even the most recent playoff matchup between the Chiefs and Bengals. That would be the 2022 AFC Championship, which—surprise!—the Chiefs won. You may remember this as the game that Bengals cornerback Mike Hilton famously declared would be played at "Burrowhead". That comment happened to be the end of the current line for the Bengals, just like the recently abused household bleach was the end of high-fashion flowing locks located on Burrow's head.
Add to this the oddly stubborn resistance of Bengals wideout Ja'Marr Chase to even acknowledge the fact that Patrick Mahomes exists, and you have a de facto crybaby cabal forming in the city of chili-topped spaghetti. Chase's resistance to common knowledge is becoming less and less surprising as he continues to pout (and sit) it out in efforts to be the league's highest-paid receiver, something that typically gets bestowed upon guys who are the league's top producers. I guess the attitude of riding on the accomplishments of 2021 is a truly fundamental issue in Cincy.
But the Chiefs don't just own the Bengals mentally. At this point, Patrick Mahomes and the boys are AFC North mental real estate tycoons. After going into Baltimore last year and winning their second consecutive and fourth out of five AFC titles, the Chiefs were bound to get the Ravens best shot in their Week 1 rematch. After all, Baltimore had all the motivation coming into this—to avenge the embarrassing loss at home after the gawdy pep rally they threw in the pregame ceremonies, to announce themselves as a true contender, and to shake the stigma that Mahomes may, in fact, be Lamar's biological father.
The Ravens did none of those things. The Chiefs (again) reigned victorious in Week 1, and Lamar (again) couldn't get it done when it mattered the most. Take away the Isaiah Likely near miracle in the back of the end zone and you have Jackson missing Likely and Zay Flowers nearly wide open on two of the final three plays of the game. And the Likely play? Wow, have we heard about that in the aftermath of the game?
Isaiah likely doesn't realize that the Chiefs were without their WR2 with his former teammate Marquise Brown sidelined with a shoulder injury. Meanwhile, Jackson hasn't caught up on the recently adopted concept of boundaries in sports. We can't blame them, since it's not like either of those pieces of information are readily available at the drop of a hat by just opening your eyes or maybe even looking at the magic piece of internet glass that we all carry in our pockets daily. When you're as locked in as the Ravens had to be to lose to the Chiefs yet again, I can understand missing those types of details.
The Chiefs are in a wild position at this point as the NFL's most hated team. Cowboys fans and Patriots fans can relate. When all you do is win, everyone else is going to eventually get sick of it. It's apparent that the top dogs in the AFC North, the Chiefs' most fierce competition outside of western New York, are starting to feel the sting of the Chiefs fatigue that is setting in across the league.
The good news? It's okay to be hated because that means you are doing something or have something that others want. The bad news? Well, that's mostly reserved for the teams that are already worked up about KC, because it doesn't look like things are changing any time soon.
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