Phoebe Schecter NFL column: Why Kansas City Chiefs have the tools to pull off ‘three-peat’

The Kansas City Chiefs come into the new NFL season looking to make history, by becoming the first team to win three straight Super Bowls.

It’s so hard to get there every year. Nothing is guaranteed. That’s the beauty of the NFL, the parity that it creates, but it creates a lot of challenges as well.

The Chiefs understand what it takes to get there, they’ve felt the expectation. That’s the standard when you walk in that building, yet it never seems too big for them.

For a lot of teams, getting to the Super Bowl would take every inch of them, but these guys are able to get there year after year.

Super Bowl week is madness, there are so many more stresses on you, yet the Chiefs find a way to treat it like it’s any other game and play their own way. It’s like they have their own cheat code.

Last year, they were not good the first half of the year, they led the league in dropped passes. Yet they still managed to make it to the Super Bowl and still managed to win in overtime.

Quarterback Patrick Mahomes is still only 28 years old (29 on 17 September). It’s crazy, his athleticism and his understanding of the game. Even when he was injured two seasons ago, at the Arizona Super Bowl, no-one thought he would finish the game.

He was pretty much hobbling off the field at half-time. Yet he comes back and runs for a key first down and they go on to win it. He’s just not your normal human.

I know people throw around this word but the Chiefs really are creating a dynasty. To have a dynasty you need to have an incredible quarterback and an incredible head coach. The Chiefs tick both those boxes.

Andy Reid is a great guy to play for. He’s not just a wonderful coach, he’s also a great mentor to his other coaches – look at his coaching tree.

And you can never ignore the relationship Mahomes has with star tight end Travis Kelce, the understanding they have. We saw it in pre-season, when Mahomes made that unbelievable behind-the-back pass, external. He was mad at Kelce for running the wrong route yet still found a way to find him.