Why extended Super Bowl celebration won’t hinder Kansas City Chiefs’ hopes for repeat

In the instant afterglow of winning a second Super Bowl, Chiefs coach Andy Reid will tell you, he felt a fresh sensation. Amid the jubilation, somehow everything slowed down around him at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.

“You kind of step back, take it all in,” Reid said on the red carpet outside Union Station before the franchise’s Super Bowl LVII ring celebration on June 15 — a date strategically timed with the last day of the team’s offseason training program.

His sense of time and place stalled enough, he added, that he “actually figured out” that the swarm of celebratory confetti launched after the 38-35 victory over the Eagles was made up of individually shaped Lombardi trophies.

But there’s been another extreme to the post-Super Bowl time warp for the Chiefs.

As much as they might be used to a compressed offseason after playing host to five straight AFC Championship Games and ascending to three of the last four Super Bowls, the price of success comes with the surcharges of reveling in the moment and being in great demand — and the challenges of navigating how much basking is detracting from turning forward.

Among plenty of other individual adventures since winning their second Super Bowl in four seasons, the Chiefs have had interstellar quarterback Patrick Mahomes appear on Jimmy Kimmel Live and superstar tight end Travis Kelce host Saturday Night Live, been lionized by a parade, glorified by a White House visit and had it all punctuated anew with the unveiling of their staggering rings.

All of that might seem reason to wonder if the Chiefs will be left complacent, distracted or otherwise stranded in what immediately will become yesteryear as of playing host to Detroit on Thursday, Sept. 7, in the NFL opener.

Motivation and focus, after all, aren’t just automatics of human nature. They have to be regularly summoned through fresh inspiration.

But there are ample reasons to believe the Chiefs will be — and perhaps already have been — forward-looking even during the extended celebration in part amplified by the pandemic muting so much after they won Super Bowl LIV in 2020.

At its simplest level, let’s start with the conscious decision made to hold the ring celebration when they did — months before the socially distanced and far less-attended version they held in September 2020.

“It’s best (now),” Reid said, noting the weeks leading into his ever-rigorous late July training camp in St. Joseph is a time to “get yourself right.”

While saying it is one thing and living it another, that message also was being delivered by the most influential voices on the team: Mahomes and Kelce, who just before the ceremony called the night “the last hoo-rah.”

Everybody involved, Kelce said, “is kind of ready to go after 2023 here and put this one in the past.”

For that matter …

“In my book, we’re already turned,” he added. “We’re already there. We’re already on to the next chapter, on to the next book, however you want to put it. That’s the mentality.”

While Reid touted the team’s performances in off-season workouts and said “the feeling you get” is that it remains a hungry group, Mahomes had a point when he said there was a meaningful psychological reset to declaring the ring ceremony the end of all that.

“I told the guys who are going to be at the ceremony tonight, ‘This is it. You’re celebrating. (This) is your last thing: get your ring,’ ” he said hours before. “Even though we’ve been working this entire time, you have in the back of your mind, ‘We’re getting our rings, we’re Super Bowl champs.’

“But now it restarts. That’s how the NFL is. It’s time to move on. You’re going to training camp next, and you want to repeat.”

The last to do that, he noted, was the 2003 and 2004 Patriots.

“So you know how hard it is to do,” he said.

They know from their own experiences.

But even if their last attempt to repeat ended with a 31-9 clobbering by Tampa Bay in Super Bowl LV, it’s hard to say they weren’t motivated and prepared for that potential encore season.

Despite playing a series of close games against lesser opposition late in the season, the Chiefs were 14-1 before resting starters in the final regular-season game.

If their offensive line hadn’t been ravaged, I believe that Super Bowl would have played out to an intriguing end instead of being a blowout.

That’s just how it is, though: Every year has its X-factors, as Reid explained in the context of winning Super Bowl LVII with words that can also be applied going forward.

“These guys are humans,” Reid said. “Everybody has issues.”

Some doubtless will surface for the Chiefs, who favorites or not have a proving ground awaiting … and that’s just in St. Joe for Reid’s ever-harsh camp.

“I think the truth happens on the field. …,” Reid said. “It’s one thing to talk about toughness, but the reality is you’ve got to go do it (and) show it.”

Just the same, here’s proposing that complacency will be a non-issue here with the Chiefs on the cusp of another frontier of history.

Consider that only six franchises in NFL history have won more than the three Super Bowls the Chiefs now have (including Super Bowl IV).

And that only four coaches have won more than the two Reid owns.

And only four quarterbacks have won more than Mahomes’ two.

The intensely process-driven and even obsessive Reid, among the greatest coaches in NFL history, certainly won’t relent now.

Especially not operating in singular collaborative synergy with Mahomes — who I believe is driven to become the best there ever was — and the attuned, astute and ever–churning general manager Brett Veach and his staff.

They’re all well-aware of the magic of this window and that everything is fickle and fleeting in the NFL.

“At least for me, it’s about maximizing the moment,” said Mahomes, who suddenly will be 28 in September. “I know that I’m not going to always have this team around me.”

With a smile, he added, “I mean, Travis is like 45 years old (actually 33). Chris (Jones) is getting up there in age, too. … All these guys are at the prime of their careers, and you never know if you’re going to have this team. …

“I don’t ever want to have the regret of not giving my best every single day and saying, ‘Hey, we had the team, and I didn’t do what I needed to do in order to put us in the right position.’ ”

So in the weeks to come, you can bet Reid will spend much of his “recharging” time at his beach house scheming and planning for the season, as ever.

“I’m at the beach but not really,” he joked. “I don’t have that beach body.”

And that, as usual, he’ll be working his wavelength with Mahomes.

“He always calls me at the most random times,” Mahomes said. “Like, he’ll call at 4 a.m, and I’m just, like, ‘Coach, I’m sleeping.’ (But) he’s up, he saw a play that he likes (and) wants to talk to me about it.

“I love it, though: We love football, and that’s why we get to come up with these creative plays because he’s always working.”

The results, of course, remain to be seen. But it starts with clearing the slate, a message that has been clearly conveyed no matter how long the celebration extended.