Creating A Dynasty

Editor’s note: This is a fanpost by Jason_from_El_Paso.

SEVEN Consecutive AFC West Titles, Hosted the AFC Championship FIVE times in a row, THREE Lamar Hunt trophies in four years and TWO Lombardis!

Read that again … does that sound like the start of a dynasty?

What does a dynasty look like? And how do you keep it going for many years? Being a middle of the road fan, I don’t claim to be an expert in talent evaluation, salary cap or draft value, I’m just a guy who loves watching our Chiefs play and hope we never have to relive the pre-Andy Reid days again.

My definition of a dynasty doesn’t come from stats or domination for the sake of domination, it comes from winning. Not just winning in the regular season or winning in the divisional round but winning the big one. Was Buffalo a dynasty when they made 4 straight SB’s? Would they be a dynasty if they would have won one or two of those?

In my mind there are only a few dynasties in the NFL and that is the 80’s-90’s 49ers, the ‘02-’19 Pats, the 70-80’s Steelers and now the Chiefs beginning their run at one. Each has their own strengths. The 49ers with Montana/Young/Rice, the Steelers with the Steel Curtain, the Chiefs with Mahomes and Reid and the Patriots with cheating. I suppose the 90’s Cowboys could be considered a dynasty as well depending on who you ask (i.e Cowboys fans vs non-Cowboys fans).

There are so many pieces that have to mesh well to make a dynasty work. Let’s go through some of those pieces and how I see them going so far in the Chiefs org (spoiler: it’s going pretty well!)

Ownership and Organizational Culture:

Your staff and players don’t do well year after year if ownership on down to the landscapers and janitors buy into a culture of winning and excelling. In the Chiefs case, you almost never hear from a prior player, coach or Front office member that has anything negative to say about the Chiefs which tells me people like playing and working in KC.

Front Office:

From Brett Veach down to each of the individual scouts, the Chiefs are excelling at finding great players to acquire via the draft, free agency and trade. This is evident from the 2023 playoff run in which 13+ rookies and new members of the Chiefs started or played significant snaps! That says to me that the Front Office is made of fantastic evaluators of talent and fit.

Coaching:

I think we all can now admit that Andy Reid is one of the greatest coaches of all time! We are lucky to have him. I think Reid is a fantastic teacher and coach who does everything he can to make his players and other coaches successful, including helping his Coordinators and coaches to advance in other organizations. Many have questions about individual situations where maybe a poor play call or time management came up, but by and large, the Chiefs have a better coached team than a vast majority of the NFL.

Players:

We obviously have the best Quarterback and Tight End in the NFL, arguably the best DT and top 5 C, LG and RG along with some other fantastic players throughout our roster. Having Patrick Mahomes really covers up some holes in the roster and makes up for a number of those shortcomings that we may have. We’ve seen in SB 55 that Patrick can’t do it all himself, it becomes extremely important to make sure that Patrick has some great players, some good players and a lot of good depth players around him to make sure he doesn’t have to do it all!

Outside of personnel, there are a few things that need to happen to keep the dynasty going:

Draft:

Obviously, having good drafts as we go is of the utmost importance to keep under the salary cap and to replace players that leave after pricing themselves off the team. I believe all of the 2022 draft class was a huge win for this team and this SB run. Luckily, Brett Veach and his team are turning into Draft experts who don’t miss often.

Fans need to be ready for many very good draft picks to not make an immediate impact because this Chiefs team is already VERY good so draft picks will have to be that much better to get on the field.

Free Agency:

I believe it to be very important that we continue to bring in veterans through Free Agency (especially those who are very good but toward the end of their career) to help with leadership with our young players and also bring in motivation to win their first SB after a longer career or perhaps to win one more on the way out depending on the vet. Carlos Dunlap and Terrell Suggs are fantastic examples of great additions to this team.

The potential pitfall of this is you may find vets unwilling to work as hard as this team requires or they don’t buy into the team first mentality.

Fans need to be ready for players to chase larger contracts and “pricing themselves out of Kansas City” due to having looked really good as a piece of a really good football team. We won’t get to keep them all!

Health and depth:

It seems that we have one of the best training departments in all the league and although injuries happen, managing injuries is of the utmost importance. We saw how not having depth and losing basically our entire O-line cost us in SB 55. Because of this, I believe it makes sense to keep known values like Clark and others while we build through the draft. Joshua WIlliams is a great example of depth helping. When Sneed went down in the AFC Championship, Williams came in and played a great game! Also, bringing in Matthew Wright was a good holdover for Butker when he was out. Not to mention Justin Reid as our emergency kicker a couple times.

Luck:

I think every Super bowl winner has gotten a call to go their way, a ball bounced their way (sometimes literally) or just escaped some injuries that could have ended a player’s year (i.e. Pat’s ankle).

And although luck really does happen, good and bad, you generally create your own luck by creating an organization from top to bottom that has players, coaches and Front Office pulling in the same direction.

Considering all of this, the Chiefs are MOST DEFINITELY a dynasty and all signs point to this dynasty continuing for many years! This is the golden age of Chiefs Kingdom and I couldn’t be more excited to live in the moment with this team year after year.

Tony Sommer

@Tony_Sommer

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