The Chiefs suddenly have been the NFL’s “it” team for years now, basically paralleling the advent of Patrick Mahomes and four Super Bowl berths in the last five seasons and, now, the pursuit of an unprecedented third straight Super Bowl victory.
And that allure has been amplified all the more by
the Taylor Swift effect since she became entwined a year ago with star tight end Travis Kelce and, thus, the Chiefs and Kansas City itself.
So a Monday Night Football appearance figured to be affirmation of that prestigious status.
Except this was anything but a normal circumstance.
So the Chiefs on this particular Monday shared a considerable spotlight with the Royals,
who defeated the Yankees 4-2 in Game 2 of the American League Division Series while
the Chiefs were in the process of stiff-arming New Orleans 26-13.
In fact …
“I feel like we heard ‘Royals, Royals’ more than (cheering) the Chiefs,” linebacker Drue Tranquill, wearing a Bobby Witt Jr. jersey, said with a smile. “I’m like … ‘we’re in Arrowhead right now.’ But it’s great.”
Said running back Samaje Perine: “I mean, after pretty much every other play, it was, ‘Let’s go Royals.’ I had no idea what was going on; I’m not a baseball guy. But they must have been doing something good, because we heard it.”
Heard it like maybe only a time or two before.
Because seldom, if ever, really, in Kansas City sports history has there ever been a synergy like this between the teams — the sort that left Union Station lit up in red and blue late Monday night.
Assuming the Chiefs (5-0) earn another playoff berth, this will be just the second time that the Royals and Chiefs will have reached the postseason in the same calendar year.
The only other time was 2015, when the Chiefs started 1-5 as the Royals were on their way to winning the World Series.
The night the
Royals won Game 5 against the Mets in New York, the [Chiefs] were on their way back from London — where they beat the Lions 45-10 as they hoisted their way out of the early-season doldrums toward an eventual playoff berth.
But if those moments were on the same day in two of the most visible and best-known cities on Earth, this night, this vibe, was more reminiscent of Sept. 29, 2014, right here.
Also on Monday Night Football, the Chiefs clobbered the Patriots 41-14 while
fans set a Guinness Book of World Records standard for loudest outdoor crowd roar at 142.2 decibels.
The extra energy that night, though, was in the very chants we heard at Arrowhead on Monday: “Let’s Go Royals,” thunderous when players appeared on the video board on what was the eve of the franchise’s first postseason game in 29 years.
In a sense, that was a warmup for the crowd the next night in the American League Wild Card game at Kauffman Stadium, where the Royals pulled off a preposterous comeback to beat Oakland 9-8 and, well, reset everything.
That team, of course, went on to Game 7 of the World Series before succumbing to the San Francisco Giants.
Along the way,
it launched the golden era of Kansas City sports — a decade that has featured four Super Bowls and two World Series and a winning bid to be a host for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
The only thing missing for the last nine years was … the Royals, who stagnated and then withered into a franchise that lost an average of 100 games over the last five full seasons.
And now … this:
The Royals are tied 1-1 with the Yankees, and with this starting rotation and Witt and Sal Perez and closer Lucas Erceg and a host of role players, who’s to say they couldn’t get past the Yankees and beyond?
That’s why even the Chiefs were thinking of them.
Before the game, such as in the form of Tranquill in his Witt jersey and Chris Jones arriving in a Bo Jackson jersey.
And even during the game, as acknowledged by
Mahomes — a Royals investor who has befriended Witt.
“One hundred percent,” he said, smiling. “I was trying not to (follow the Royals game). I really wanted to focus on (the Chiefs) game and look after (or) maybe get a scoreboard kind of shot of it. And they gave us a couple of those.”
Somehow, though, even as he was throwing for 331 yards, Mahomes was feeling the pulse of the Royals game.
And not necessarily just from updated scores from New York that were being posted on the GEHA Field at Arrowhead video boards: Fans no doubt also were reacting in real-time following the Royals by whatever means of their own they could: radio or streaming, etc.
“You could feel that stuff was going good, and (then) there was kind of a lull there towards the end of the game,” Mahomes said. “And I was, like, they’re not showing … the score. The Yankees came back.
“But no, the Royals picked it up and got the win.”
As special as Arrowhead has been to Mahomes, there was something distinct about the energy on Monday that seemed to meld together the allegiances.
“It was cool,” Mahomes said, “to see that kind of combined.”
And to feel it compounded that way on a night like few, if any, others in Kansas City sports history — a night that replenishes the 10-year message that anything is possible after so many years when nothing seemed that way.
