The most scandalous thing you’ll find right now relating to the reigning Super Bowl champion doesn’t really involve the team at all, but one of its better-known fans.
Xavier Babudar, aka Chiefsaholic, aka the guy in the wolf costume who the cameras often find during games at Arrowhead, is reportedly on the lam after skipping bail over a bank robbery charge.
If you’re looking for the sum total of offseason controversy involving the NFL’s best team, that’s it.
No quarterback saga or standoff or spiritual darkness think session; not with Patrick Mahomes nowhere near the midpoint of the 10-year extension he signed in 2020.
No angst and fallout and situations playing out through the media. No high-profile trade demands. No guessing game over the fate or destination of some of the most important players.
Not even any lingering injury concern surrounding Mahomes, according to coach Andy Reid, who told NFL Network his QB has made a strong recovery from the ankle problem that hampered him (but not enough to stop him) during the end of the playoffs.
“He didn’t have to get anything done,” Reid said. “He’s doing good. He feels good, Reid said. “He jumped right back into workouts and working the ankle, rehabbing the ankle. He’s lifting and running the parts that he could run, and he didn’t miss a beat on that.”
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Reid is a master of downplaying and diffusing, his in-season press briefings typically taking a tone of “nothing to see here.” Sometimes it is a ruse. It doesn’t seem to be right now.
The Chiefs, fresh from lifting the Vince Lombardi Trophy for the second time in the Reid/Mahomes/Travis Kelce era, simply seem deep in the process of attempting to do it again, free of the kind of encumbrances some other franchises are mired in.
Part of the key to success in the NFL is centered not around what you hear but what you don’t. We are conditioned to expect the teams that hit our airwaves, Twitter feeds and the talk radio circuit to be the ones best positioned to shine. It sort of makes sense; they wouldn’t be getting talked about if they weren’t good, and relevant, right?
But it doesn’t really play out that way.
Look at the championship teams over the past few seasons. There’s not much of a “we did it despite the drama” narrative going on. Even when Tom Brady led Tampa Bay to a title in his first season in Florida, all the focus and attention was based on the intrigue of seeing Brady in a fresh location after all those years in New England.
As for Kansas City, you almost want to feel sorry for the local newspaper and its beat writers, who are left with nothing much to talk about because nothing much is happening. Instead, the Kansas City Star was left to ruminate this week on what the team’s Super Bowl rings might look like when they are eventually revealed (bigger, bolder and blingier, apparently).
There has been a smattering of free-agency action but nothing was allowed to blow up into more than what it was. Influential left tackle Orlando Brown Jr. walked in free agency and took his talents to Cincinnati, so Jawaan Taylor, formerly of the Jacksonville Jaguars, was swiftly signed as a plug-in replacement who will switch from the right side.
Free-agent wide receivers Juju Smith-Schuster and Mecole Hardman moved on, but Reid has already identified enhanced action for Kadarius Toney and Skyy Moore, while the potential for a splashy signing such as Odell Beckham or a trade for DeAndre Hopkins remains.
We’re barely into spring, and there has been a bare minimum of fuss around Kansas City. As a result, the Chiefs look dangerous once again, not because they’re on the radar but essentially because they’re not.
They’re happy for the discussion to be full of juicy snippets from Green Bay and spreading over to the green part of New York. And for the conjecture to continue about what will happen and who will be under center in Baltimore in a few months’ time.
The NFL’s most dangerous team is never more lethal than when it’s sneaking up on you, quietly. Quiet mode has been activated this offseason. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
