Beginning in 2004, it was fashionable for handicappers to predict that a particular season was the one that the New England Patriots would fall from their perch atop the AFC East Division standings. Perhaps it was a season the Miami Dolphins would get them, or a year the New York Jets would emerge. In more recent campaigns, it was the Buffalo Bills picked to upend the perennial division champs.
Turns out the only way the Patriots were going to end a season not in first place was if they didn’t have Tom Brady leading their charge from the quarterback position. In 2008, Brady was injured on opening day against the Kansas City Chiefs and missed the year due to the torn ACL. That was the only season the Patriots didn’t win their division or have a record as good as any other team in the AFC East after Brady first took over for an injured Drew Bledsoe in 2001.
How good was Brady?
After winning all those division titles, the first season he was out of New England, 2020, the Patriots had a losing record and the team he went to, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, won the Super Bowl. Brady guided the Buccaneers to a win in Super Bowl LV over the Kansas City Chiefs, who had the only quarterback this century that has been compared in favorable terms to Brady: Patrick Mahomes.
Mahomes met Brady twice in the postseason, losing to him in the 2018 AFC Championship Game and in the Super Bowl that concluded the 2020 season.
In other words, any prediction that the Patriots were going to fall from the top while Brady was leading their charge was never realized. But how about the Chiefs falling from their decade long perch atop the AFC West Division standings? After all, they already missed the postseason last year on the heels of getting blown out by the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LIX, 40-22.
While Mahomes may have earned a reputation to rival Brady’s, I think we are headed into a time when the Mahomes magic is dimmed. He ended last season on the injury list after suffering a torn ACL and LCL to his left leg in the fifteenth week of the season. Those initials refer to the Anterior Cruciate Ligament and Anterior Cruciate Ligament. His return this season could be delayed during his recovery and whether he will ever regain his dynamic elusive attributes are in serious question.
The Chiefs decline is also pinned to other factors.
Head Coach Andy Reid has been a head coach in the NFL since 1999. He spent 14 seasons in that role with the Philadelphia Eagles. During his tenure in the City of Brotherly Love he won 140 games, nearly triple any number of wins to previous and future Philadelphia head coaches. Still, he didn’t win a Super Bowl in Philadelphia, although he did participate in one to complete the 2004 season, but lost to Tom Brady and his Patriots.
Reid moved right from his position with the Eagles to head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs. In Kansas City he led a franchise that had the worst record in football before he arrived, to a team that appeared in five Super Bowls beginning in the 2019 season and won three Vince Lombardi Trophies.
The most demanding professions take a toll on those individuals that serve in a primary role. An NFL head coach is one of the most demanding positions in all of sports, and the constant scrutiny in a league that only one of 32 organizations end a season on top. It takes a toll on most men. Losing a head coaching position, in most years seven of the 32 coaches are fired or retired, this year there were ten head coaches that finished their seasons with teams and then let go.
Reid, of course, wasn’t one of them.
Two coaches with long tenures were.
The Baltimore Ravens and Buffalo Bills, who both participated in the playoffs in January, surprised the football world by firing John Harbaugh and Sean McDermott respectively. Then, after losing his postseason game to the Houston Texans, the Steelers longtime head coach, Mike Tomlin, who never led a losing season in 19 years in Pittsburgh, resigned.
Reid is expected to begin his 14th year at the helm of the Chiefs in 2026. You think he will serve a 15th? You think Mahomes is going to continue his legacy as the only rival to Brady for being the best ever?
I think not, twice.