The microphone made its way to Patrick Mahomes, who had to rearrange some things to take hold of it. A Coors Light can occupied one hand and a Super Bowl MVP trophy the other as he stood atop a makeshift stage in front of Union Station.
The Chiefs quarterback would speak for just a couple of minutes to close the Super Bowl parade in downtown Kansas City, before delivering a notable closing line:
“I just wanna let ya’ll know that this is just the beginning,” he said. “We ain’t done yet.
“I’ll make sure to hit ya’ll back next year!”
Five minutes later, defensive lineman Chris Jones begged for a turn at the mic, and he promptly began a chant with the same message:
Run it Back.
That’s the phrase the Chiefs adopted three seasons ago after winning their first Super Bowl in the Mahomes Era and then returning the majority of the group responsible for it.
That’s not the way to go this time.
Aside from the fact it would be beneficial to invigorate a locker room with guys who have that never-won-it-before edge, here’s the primary reason the Chiefs should supplement this roster:
Because they can.
As the Chiefs strolled down Grand Boulevard and stood on stage in front of the Union Station backdrop, know this:
They’re just getting started.
If this is a dynasty — and the Chiefs quibble with usage of that term — then this is its sunrise, not its sunset.
Absolutely, Mahomes is part of that reasoning. He’s just 27, after all, and he’s shown a capability — and willingness — to adapt his game.
Absolutely, head coach Andy Reid is another part of it.
But the gist of the point is they are not all of it — that those who return to “Run it Back” are not all of it, either.
The Chiefs just concluded a 14-3 regular season in which they grabbed the No. 1 seed in the AFC, and then they followed it up by winning the Lombardi Trophy. And six months from now, as they embark on training camp, they should be ... better?
This is the typical message of championship parades. It is not, however, what is typically waiting on the other side of one. The encores open with optimism, to be sure, but there’s a reason why the New England Patriots were the last franchise to win back-to-back titles in the 2003-04 seasons.
The argument for the Chiefs to break that mold isn’t simply that they had the best team, and that most of that team could return.
It’s that they just broke a different mold — and they have even more resources to do it again.
The Chiefs just won a Super Bowl with their quarterback occupying a touch more than 17.1% of their salary cap. No team had before won with its quarterback eating up more than 12.61% of the cap, when Tom Brady guided the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a win against the Chiefs two years ago.
We often grade quarterbacks in tiers, but it’s time to acknowledge that Mahomes is in a tier of his own. You can actually get away with paying him like it — though it helps when the other moves on the roster are made with an eye toward the future.
The quarterbacks the Chiefs beat in these playoffs, all high-caliber players, occupied 3.6% (Trevor Lawrence), 4.6% (Joe Burrow) and 0.7% (Jalen Hurts) of their respective team’s salary cap. Those teams advance in the postseason because they had good quarterback play, but also because they had plenty of resources with which to surround their quarterback.
Here’s the rub: The Chiefs do, too, this offseason.
That’s despite the quarterback’s salary being on the verge of an increase.
This is not only an unusual combination, but basically unprecedented, and it’s why the future could be just as bright as the euphoria that overtook downtown Kansas City on Wednesday afternoon.
The Chiefs have the pricey quarterback, but they’ve remained thin on the middle management, so to speak. The Philadelphia Eagles, for example, have 18 players whose cap charge will exceed $3.5 million next year. The Chiefs have just eight players who fit that description. That number that will certainly change between now and August, but that’s where it sits as of now.
But that’s kind of the point — the front office’s roster construction has allowed them to make some moves this offseason.
How? They’ve gained starter-level contributions with scraps-level payment relative to their NFL peers.
The Buffalo Bills have 15 players whose charge exceeds $3.5 million. The Cincinnati Bengals are at 15, too.
The Chiefs didn’t win a Super Bowl because of high-priced free-agent acquisitions surrounding Patrick Mahomes — the way they went out and got Frank Clark and Tyrann Mathieu before the last championship, for example.
They did this on their own.
They specifically avoided those moves, and they still found heavy contributors to what unfolded this year. Among the 22 players who started on offense and defense for the Chiefs on Sunday, 10 of them are situated to occupy less than 1.5% of the cap next season — Trent McDuffie, L’Jarius Sneed, George Karlaftis, Willie Gay, Nick Bolton, Creed Humphrey, Noah Gray, Trey Smith, Jaylen Watson and Isiah Pacheco. Heck, the latter three on that list will still earn less than $1 million in 2023.
And that’s what has them so well-positioned to make this a trend.
The ability to find cheap talent. And the priority of finding avenues for acquiring that cheap talent.
When the Chiefs traded Tyreek Hill some 11 months ago now, the idea was to extend their championship window. Remember that? Well, they won it all in the present, and that doesn’t negate that future.
It enhances it.
The Chiefs have draft picks in every round in 2023, when the NFL Draft heads to Kansas City at the same site they concluded Wednesday’s parade, and they double up in rounds four and seven. Two of those picks are from the Miami Dolphins, leftovers of the Hill trade.
The future is more than the picks, of course. There are some other numbers that bend in their favor. They have the 14th most effective cap space available heading into the new league year next month, per Spotrac. The top of that list is littered with teams that did not fare well in 2022 or teams with quarterback extensions on the horizon. The Chiefs fall into the upper half after the quarterback extension.
A month ago, Pro Football Focus compiled an offseason resources model using three criteria: cap space, draft pick capital and the ability to restructure the contracts already on the books to create even more wiggle room. The Chiefs rank 11th in that resources composite table.
Every other AFC playoff team trails them on that list. Every. Single. One.
They trailed the Chiefs this season, and they trail the Chiefs in the race to get better.
