Who Needs Parity When You Have a Dynasty?

Love them or hate them, the dominance of the Kansas City Chiefs has been good for your NFL fandom.

Photo by Brock Wegner on Unsplash

As red and gold confetti fell in Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas last February, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes seemingly brushed off the win as if it were just another day in the office. As he and his partner-in-crime teammate Travis Kelce celebrated their second consecutive Super Bowl victory— and their third in five seasons— the duo had led their franchise into dynasty territory: a label reserved for some of the NFL’s most legendary teams, such as the New England Patriots in the 2000s and 2010s, the Dallas Cowboys in the 1990s, and the San Francisco 49ers in the 1980s. They looked as if they knew this moment was inevitable, and soaked it all in accordingly. Fast forward to 2025 when later this week the Chiefs have the potential to become one of the greatest dynasties in all of sports history by becoming the NFL’s first franchise to win three consecutive Lombardi trophies.

Although historic, the Chiefs’ run of dominance during the last half decade has also earned them the reputation as being the league’s villains to many, but not most, NFL fans; the latest in a long line of anti-heroes that have captured their sport’s ire. This phenomenon, recently coined as “Chiefs fatigue,” is very real in 2025. Although it isn’t universal, NFL fans seem to be sick of Kansas City’s prosperity. But many fans’ evident dread and frustration in reaction to the Chiefs’ longevity, as well as the collective relief that these same fans will feel in the future when Kansas City is inevitably dethroned, demonstrates the importance of this franchise’s success to the NFL faithful, whether they know it or not.

Though it’s hard to remember now, the Chiefs weren’t always the boogeymen of the NFL. Just five years ago, Kansas City, led by Patrick Mahomes in just his second season as the starting quarterback, played quite a different role in the NFL playoffs. In defeating the Tennessee Titans in the 2020 AFC Championship, the Chiefs were seemingly adopted by NFL fans everywhere as giant slayers. They were the team that finally surpassed The Team. For over a decade, the New England Patriots had ruled the NFL with an iron fist behind the GOAT, Tom Brady, and his hoodie-clad, monotone-voiced head coach, Bill Belichick, who made winning rings appear second nature. Super Bowl champions in 2002, 2004, 2005, 2015, 2017, and 2019, the Patriots under Belichick, prior to the Chiefs’ ascendence, were rightfully considered to be the greatest dynasty in NFL history.

Consequently, when Mahomes and company led the Chiefs to an AFC Championship over the dreaded Patriots, and later to a Super Bowl title for the first time since 1970, they were lauded as heroes; plucky upstarts who finally downed the perennial champions who had kept the league under their thumb for far too long. When the 2021 playoffs rolled around and the Chiefs continued to dominate the AFC, and ultimately made another Super Bowl appearance, this time against Tom Brady in his first season with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, many NFL fans had no issue whatsoever rooting for them for a second time. However, their loss to Brady, and later falling to Joe Burrow’s Cincinnati Bengals in the 2022 AFC Championship, seemed to let some air out of America’s initial, brief obsession with the Chiefs… for now.

When Kansas City made yet another Super Bowl appearance the next year, there seemed to be a shift in NFL fans’ perceptions of Mahomes and company. No longer were they the likable new kids on the block who brought down an empire. They were flirting with dominance, and therefore were becoming too great to be loved. If fans hadn’t already abandoned their adopted support for the Chiefs, many more did so then. During the 2023 campaign in which they claimed another Lombardi trophy to add to their expanding display case, and Travis Kelce started dating a certain pop star whom you may or may not be familiar with, the tenor surrounding this franchise had flipped completely. Most anyone who was not born a Kansas City Chiefs fan now saw them as the neighborhood bullies who seemed determined to deprive fans of their favorite team’s chances of achieving glory of their own, especially those in the AFC (sorry, Bills fans.) As Kansas City’s head coach Andy Reid steadfastly continued to play his style of football with a seemingly endless pool of talent, his most famous players starred in one commercial after another, and Swifties everywhere became the Chiefs’ biggest fans, to many the former underdog franchise had completed its transformation into the league’s most loathed front men.

This story arc concluded differently from that of the Chiefs’ predecessors, the Patriots. Kansas City has drawn as much dislike as New England did from all corners of the NFL world, not because they’re boring as many have described Belichick’s teams, but in some ways because they’re star-studded. The players who just a few years ago were young and fearless are now seen as seasoned and calculated, if not sinisterly so. Although this growing distaste for the Chiefs led by future Hall of Famers Mahomes and Kelce isn’t solely rooted in a sense of jealousy or envy from their haters— who would gladly take them on their own teams— the pair’s meteoric rise to stardom can’t be minimized, either. During Tom Brady’s time as the game’s premier gunslinger, and arguably most reviled star, he led a team of largely reserved team players who bought into Belichick’s often recited motto of “do your job.” Winning Super Bowl after Super Bowl was to be celebrated, sure, but at the end of the day, it was just part of being a New England Patriot. As a result, fans quickly grew tired of their dominance, in part because it was just plain boring. Yes, there were considerable controversies during Brady’s and Belichick’s time at the top of the NFL mountain that understandably turned fans sour on them, but for the most part, they became the villains by being cold, unentertaining assassins on the gridiron.

The Chiefs on the other hand seem to have attracted so much hate for being exciting for nearly all of their run of titles these last few seasons. Even their head coach Andy Reid is regarded as being one of the most likable characters in the entire NFL, a far cry from Belichik’s reputation during his time as the head whistle in Foxborough. But even having a universally beloved head coach hasn’t been enough to turn some fans’ to their side. The inverse relationship between the Chiefs’ likability on paper and their popular perception is a striking comparison that only fuels the debate over their reputation, particularly after Kansas City’s recent performances.

The 2024-25 season has arguably been the Chiefs’ weakest yet of their dynastic reign. Their regular season point differential this season was +59, down from +77 in 2023, +127 in 2022, and +111 in 2020. They’ve won 12 one-score games this season, extending their streak in this category to 17 games— the most in NFL history. As unbelievable as that statistic sounds, it’s all the more frustrating for fans who witnessed the Chiefs receive one miracle after another: they incredulously blocked a Broncos’ low-flying, would be game-winning field goal, doinked-in a game-winning field goal try of their own against the Chargers, and received immensely good fortune in the form of a head-scratching, controversial overturned false start-turned illegal shift penalty called against the Raiders on their final drive of the game that threatened to deal the two-time defending champs their first loss of the season.

The Chiefs’ string of good luck throughout the entire 2024 season serves to support their haters’ narratives; namely that they’re the league’s anointed ones or the heads of its new Evil Empire. To their supporters, so many close calls that have gone their way just proves that they’re the team of destiny en route to being the first ever three-peat Super Bowl champions. This debate has been underway all season long, but even as discourse surrounding Chiefs fatigue has grown online, some polls suggest that this increase is only marginal at best, even indicating that the Chiefs remain among the most well liked teams in the NFL. If nothing else, the Chiefs’ run of excellence has proven to be a polarizing, yet inspiring achievement that has created more debate amongst NFL fans in recent memory.

In the lead up to Super Bowl 59 in which the Philadelphia Eagles are the next challenger to Kansas City’s supremacy in a plot for revenge, the rift in the NFL’s fanbase is drawn along red and gold fault lines, and has been for the majority of the season. Week in and week out, fans have tuned in to equally both support their teams and root against the Chiefs, otherwise known as hate-watching. Although they’re certainly not the first team to fall victims to hate-watching, the Chiefs seem to be a magnet for it, breaking all-time viewership records in their divisional round playoff game against the Houston Texans, and again in the AFC Championship game versus perhaps the NFL’s most tortured franchise, the Buffalo Bills. In some ways, hate-watching feeds into Chiefs fatigue, but also amplifies fans’ own passions. It also reflects their shared obsession for the sport that, to some, is threatened by the Chiefs’ dynasty. They keep coming back even after the Chiefs’ maddeningly tally win after win because they love the sport, regardless of who’s running the show.

The Kansas City Chiefs dynasty has served as a unifying force of sorts for NFL fans everywhere. Plenty of fans seem to agree that although historic, the Chiefs’ run of excellence has gone on long enough. Supporters of league-wide parity have been forced to watch five years of one team single-handedly wrecking their hopes of chaos in hopes of ushering in a new era of fresh, underdog champions. Consequently, fans have focused their energy both inward and outward. They’ve had to come to grips with the simple fact that their teams, with the exception of a slim number of franchises, currently just don’t have what it takes to win a Super Bowl and etch their names in the history books. This is a tough pill to swallow for many, particularly as Chiefs’ fans have come to expect nothing less than a Super Bowl every season, despite waiting 40 years in between league titles. This realization can result in fans becoming apathetic, bitterly accepting that their teams can’t dethrone the Chiefs, forever doomed to soul-crushing mediocrity.

But this has also had the opposite effect. Fans have become reinvigorated in their passions for their teams, and urged them onward even more so than they had previously in hopes of being the ones that took down Kansas City and ended their run at history, even as improbable as this effort may have been. Hope, if only faint hope, can inspire even the most downtrodden fans. Externally, fans may have even temporarily become fans of another team, any team, that faced off against the Chiefs. They may have adopted another franchise for a few hours in hopes of seeing them become the ones to strike a fatal blow against the league’s top dogs, even if that team isn’t necessarily their own.

To many fans of the other 31 teams in the NFL, the Chiefs represent the unifying force that has both set the standard and obliterated all hopes of an equitable league. Clinging to whatever hope remains of ending their reign sustains fans across the country who otherwise would be hopeless. Through the close games, the controversial officiating, and the off-the-field noise, the Kansas’ City Chiefs have been one of the greatest gifts NFL fans could have hoped for, whether they like it or not, and the results of Super Bowl 59 probably won’t change that fact.