One win is still missing and the Kansas City Chiefs would be in the Super Bowl again. The fact that they even made it into the duel with the Ravens is a surprise.
A win against the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday and the Kansas City Chiefs will be back in the NFL’s Super Bowl – for the fourth time in the past five years.
The team around quarterback star Patrick Mahomes is represented in the AFC finals for the sixth time in a row. Even though the team is defending champion, this is a surprise. The Chiefs have had a mixed season with unusual mistakes, six defeats and numerous distractions – Taylor Swift’s new girlfriend alongside Travis Kelce being the biggest one.
The league and everyone who makes money from it is extremely happy about the gigantic interest that the pop superstar has been bringing to the NFL for months. Whenever she attends a Chiefs football game, the cameras are trained on the singer again and again during the game.
Coach Andy Reid, Mahomes and of course Kelce himself always have to answer questions about her – including on Wednesday before the most important game of the season so far against the Ravens. “It was cool for me to see. He’s obviously getting all the attention,” Mahomes said of the focus on his buddy. “But he’s still Travis Kelce. He still walks around the stadium and greets everyone like they’re his best buddy.”
Kelce as an advertising icon
This is also remarkable because Kelce is now 34 years old, has had more physical problems than ever since his professional debut and has experienced several scenes this season with uncaught balls that had not happened to him in previous seasons. For the first time in almost nine years he finished the season with fewer than 1,000 passing yards, and only twice in his career did he have fewer than the five touchdowns from this season in the main round.
As frustrated as he sometimes seemed on the pitch, Kelce seemed to be doing great off it. The relationship with Swift has made him a star beyond football fan circles; hardly any program on US television in recent months has been without a commercial with Kelce as the main character. “I didn’t feel like it affected him,” coach Reid emphasized. “He was a little banged up and the week off helped him, but other than that he just goes on. Relationships, all the stuff off the field with commercial shoots, Saturday Night Live, all that, he keeps going.”
Mahomes: “We want to win every week”
As do the Chiefs as a team. When, after the opening defeat against the Detroit Lions, Amon-Ra St. Brown, who now has a chance of reaching the Super Bowl in a duel with the San Francisco 49ers, continued with six wins in a row, that was normal. But then a phase of five bankruptcies in eight games followed – something Mahomes was not used to in his sixth season as a regular. Suddenly you saw him throwing helmets on the sidelines and reacting insulted to questions. Nevertheless, the team is now in the finals of the American Football Conference.
“We want to win every week, that’s how it is in the NFL. But that’s not possible. So you just have to do everything you can to get better and that’s what the guys did. That’s why we’re in this game now,” Mahomes explained before the Travel to Baltimore. “We’re trying to win that and then we’re trying to get better again for the Super Bowl.” For the first time he will play an AFC Championship Game away from home and not in Kansas City.
If the Chiefs actually win against the strong team around quarterback Lamar Jackson, they will once again be part of the largest individual sporting event in the world – this year in Las Vegas. Usher is responsible for the halftime show; after the Formula 1 spectacle in November, many are expecting a Super Bowl of superlatives. The Chiefs want to ensure that in the end it’s all about the sport. And possibly also Taylor Swift in the confetti rain.
2024-01-25 08:44:41
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