The Chiefs want to move on from Kadarius Toney flag. Why part of that won’t be easy

The first sports idols to a young Patrick Mahomes included shortstops Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez, and he was lucky enough to meet them by the time he began grade school. That memory popped into his head this week, by the way.

The same toddler-aged Patrick Mahomes would don a Minnesota Twins jersey or New York Mets gear, the teams for which his father played. He rooted for the Texas Rangers a bit, too.

But then the next chapter of his sports fandom would come a few years later — the one that’s notable for the rest of this column.

The ire.

“I remember growing up, I didn’t like the Patriots,” Mahomes said during a sitdown with The Star during training camp. He was responding to a question from my colleague, Vahe Gregorian.

Why?

“Because they won all the time.”

A forewarning if there ever was one.

Among the takeaways from a chaotic, unusual and truly bizarre week for the Chiefs, I’m going to underscore that aspect here: It’s never been more clear that they are not America’s favorite team. Don’t overthink the reasoning behind it.

They win.

A lot.

Just as those Patriots teams once did. It’s fitting, sure, that the Chiefs travel to play New England on Sunday, even if they aren’t facing the same roster that produced six championships over two decades, or that Tom Brady quarterbacked.

The Super Bowl commemorations inside Gillette Stadium remain nonetheless.

So should the lessons.

Especially now.

The Chiefs have endured a week unlike any in the Mahomes Era, one that has out-of-market cartoonists depicting the quarterback as a baby, or national pundits calling the entire team the same. It’s probably true that the “haters,” as they say, were always out there. They’ve just never been quite this loud.

It was all ignited by one penalty, an offensive offside flag against Chiefs receiver Kadarius Toney that negated a miraculous touchdown late in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s loss to the Bills. As the game closed, Mahomes threw a fit on the sideline, and he and head coach Andy Reid publicly ripped into the officials in separate post-game news conferences.

Truth? The Chiefs have some legitimate gripes about the process within the call, though none of them are that Toney wasn’t offside. He was. I’ve covered that. Their frustration is the absence of the typical warning.

But really? That doesn’t matter. Not to those with an iPhone, keyboard, podcast or television camera.

The response to the response — if you’re following — illuminated where the Chiefs are now. And I don’t mean 8-5 for the first time in Mahomes’ career.

I mean disliked.

Hated, perhaps.

More than a few are basking in what they see as cracks in the Chiefs’ reign. This isn’t just the social media echo chamber, either. The Buffalo News ran a cartoon with Mahomes in a diaper, a pacifier next to him reading “blame the refs.”

Some of the talking heads on ESPN, Fox Sports and others called the team whiners. Sore losers. That’s the national narrative about the Chiefs right now. And as the they insist they’re moving on, plenty of fans elsewhere sure seem to be reveling in it all too.

The Chiefs have perhaps worn out their welcome in the spotlight. The football world is ready to find their flaws and pounce. And the Chiefs provided them some ammo.

This was always going to come in waves at some point, and it probably has been a bit of a thing for a while, but man it sure accelerated quickly. Just three years ago, two-thirds of the country was rooting for the Chiefs against the Brady-led Buccaneers in the Super Bowl, per one survey. Because who would root for Brady to get another, right?

Which brings us back to that guy. Brady. The seven-time Super Bowl champion. And the aforementioned lessons.

What Brady’s Patriots did best — before his Bucs did it once, too — was thrive in the face of upheaval. Of chaos. Of outside noise.

They didn’t merely toss it all aside. They used it.

At one Super Bowl with the Patriots, Brady was asked about this.

“What do we do about the haters?” he repeated out loud. “We love them.”

The Patriots were embroiled in controversy during those two decades. Deflategate cost Brady the first four games of the 2016 season.

But it cost them little else. Brady would go 14-1 as a starter and take home the Lombardi Trophy and the game’s MVP trophy.

The tuck rule game? They won the Super Bowl that season, too. Spygate? They reached the Super Bowl and finished runner-up.

To be sure, there’s no doubt those were larger-scale storms than what the Chiefs are facing after a couple of would-like-to-have-them-back arguments challenging a call. No one’s accused the Chiefs of cheating.

So why bring it up? The lessons are the same.

The Patriots found success in the face of chaos. Found success when it became evident how many were rooting for them to fail. Found success when the outside world thought it had spotted signs it was all crumbling down.

This is the closest the Chiefs have been to disarray since Mahomes arrived in 2017 — 8-5, without a fast track to the No. 1 seed and AFC’s homefield advantage, struggling to find a rhythm offensively and on the heels of a loss that comes with sour grapes. You bet there are fans elsewhere enjoying these moments. It’s human nature to grow tired of a champion’s success.

The Patriots became experts at turning that into fuel toward another title. Loved it, Brady said.

The Chiefs are insistent they’ve moved on from the Toney penalty, even as they haven’t ceded ground on their initial thoughts about the call.

Makes sense. But the aftermath — the world-against-them response — isn’t going anywhere.

It’s part of their future. So long as success is part of it, too.