The Chiefs are doing something outside football that, embarrassingly, is rare
The Chiefs call themselves a family, but that’s something football players must tell themselves to shield the more brutal truth. Families don’t trade family members with other families. They don’t draft younger family members to replace the older or less productive ones.
The point is not to recreate family. The point is more nuanced, and in some ways more difficult.
How can you take 53 men with wildly different life experiences and beliefs, together in an environment with potentially enormous personal fame and riches on the line, and convince them to put the collective above themselves?
If you have followed the Chiefs for more than a season a half you’ve seen how difficult it is, and if you’ve followed the Chiefs for more than Andy Reid’s eight seasons as head coach you’ve seen how the challenge can turn into disaster.
We can’t know how this season will end. The Chiefs could win the Super Bowl. They could lose in the first round. COVID-19 could wreck it all.
But we do know this season has presented incredible challenges to everyone, and at least in their small corner of the world the Chiefs appear to be handling it productively and cohesively.
COVID is the most obvious example. Young men often like to be out, to see and to be seen. That’s often especially true for young men who are also professional football players. Perfect compliance is a myth, and the Chiefs have more resources and reasons to be cautious than most, but they’ve had only a small number of positive tests out of thousands.
But that’s not what I’m thinking about. We’re all multitasking our lives with COVID risk management, and virtually all of us are doing it without the substantial support of a full-time staff of support and real time contact tracing.
The Chiefs have had other opportunities to break. Patrick Mahomes and Tyrann Mathieu helped lead get out the vote drives, most tangibly in working with the Chiefs to use Arrowhead Stadium as a voting site.
This was notable in many ways. Mahomes and Mathieu have never publicly discussed their voting preferences, but presumably lean toward Democrats. Clark Hunt has a long and consistent record of supporting Republican candidates.
You can go cynical if you’d like here, and believe that Mahomes and Mathieu have been pushed into this, or that Hunt is only playing along for optics but this is true: they’re still working together.
The dynamic in the locker room is even more interesting, and more substantial in how the team operates. Again: no Chiefs player or coach has publicly supported a candidate or political party.
But Reid helped fund-raise for a Republican candidate for Kansas governor two years ago, and Anthony Sherman placed a Make America Great Again hat in his locker four years ago. The coaching staff and locker room are presumably filled with others who agree, and others who don’t, with strong beliefs on both sides.
Think about that. All over this country friendships have ended or been altered because of politics. Many families prohibit political talk during meals, or even at all. Some have splintered over election preferences.
Professional sports is a nomadic existence. Relationships come and go. The traditional way around a political divide in these temporary work groups is the same as in many houses — you just don’t go there. For years, athletes have largely ignored the topic. They insist their concentration is entirely on their craft, and nothing else.
But the initiatives from Mahomes and Mathieu — the two most accomplished, respected, and well-liked players on each side of the ball — have made that impossible.
So how do hyper competitive men with wildly different life experiences and presumably opposed political beliefs talk about current events without letting it affect their relationships or work?
Carefully. Respectfully.
“We talked about certain subjects,” Mahomes said. “You have those conversations because you have people that come from all different backgrounds, from different areas of the country. You definitely talk and listen and get different perspectives. But we try to keep it out of the politics, being so divisive as it is. But we want to understand where everyone’s coming from no matter who you vote for.”
Now, we’re assuming that when Mahomes said “keep it out of the politics” he means not debating specific candidates. So the idea would be for guys to share their beliefs, and what’s important to them for our country and elected officials, but avoid specific Trump-vs.-Biden debates.
That’s a bit of a tightrope, and we can also assume the discussions were intense, and occasionally drifted into specific candidates — particularly those for president.
The lack of locker room access for media has limited insight into personal interactions. Fans and reporters see only what’s shown on video news conferences, and network broadcasts. So we’re connecting dots here.
It’s also worth noting that in other organizations — especially losing ones like the Falcons and Jets — players have not shown the same solidarity.
But the Chiefs have stayed together. Stayed successful. Stayed fun.
Now, it would be nice to believe the Chiefs are showing some template for respectful conversations across political disagreements. That would be amazing, and future-shifting.
But the reality is that Chiefs players and coaches have enough shared shared goals directly dependent on working together that it’s in everyone’s best interests to get along.
In that way, this is less about an example for the rest of us and more another example of something that’s been increasingly true over the last few years.
This group is rare in many ways. It is young, talented, accomplished and ambitious. It has also navigated COVID-19 and a dive into the most divided political discourse in a generation. It has done so while maintaining all appearances of cohesion and love for each other.
That’s a powerful statement for the locker room’s leadership, and the capacity for common shared goals.
A much worse statement about the rest of the country is that the act of respectfully discussing political issues is noteworthy.
This story was originally published November 5, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "The Chiefs are doing something outside football that, embarrassingly, is rare."