It’s Tuesday. Here are my notes …
• If the Kansas City Chiefs win one of their final three games, they’ll become the third team in NFL history to post three 14-win campaigns in a five-year span—joining the San Francisco 49ers of the late 1980s and early 1990s and the New England Patriots of the 2000s. And if they win out, they’ll have 67 wins over that period, giving them more than the other two over five years (of course with a slight boost from the 17-game schedule).
This has been a pretty historic period for the Chiefs and it all starts with Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid, and after that, Chris Jones and Travis Kelce.
And while those guys carry more than their weight, the front office deserves credit for building a sustainable model around them—one that consistently features a deep supporting cast. And it’s even more impressive when you really dig into the numbers.
So, over this particular five-year period (from 2020 to ’24), the Chiefs are actually—by one set of internal numbers we obtained—18th in the NFL in cash spending at $1.151 billion. That’s more than $200 million, or a staggering $40 million per year, behind the league-leading Cleveland Browns who spent $1.362 billion over the same stretch. The 49ers ($1.298 billion), Philadelphia Eagles ($1.287 billion), New Orleans Saints ($1.264 billion), Miami Dolphins ($1.259 billion) and Buffalo Bills ($1.251 billion) are all at least $100 million, or $20 million per year, ahead of the Chiefs, too.
Now, there’s a lot of nuance to these numbers. The Browns, Niners, Eagles, Saints, Dolphins and Bills have been aggressive in spending cash over cap—pushing cap charges into the future to facilitate more cash spending now—and their ownership groups deserve credit for it. Other teams, like the Chiefs, take a different approach, whether it’s based on budgets or philosophy, and try to live within real contracts to avoid piling up the cap debt that eventually necessitates a reckoning, which generally comes in the form of a reset year.
Mahomes and DeAndre Hopkins’s contracts are the only ones on the team’s books with void years, the mechanism that buries cap charges in phony seasons at the end of a contract, and Hopkins’s contract was one they traded for. While Mahomes’s deal has been heavily leveraged, the Chiefs know he’s going to be on the team for a long time to come, which gives them the flexibility to push that money out.
Of course, to make this work, the Chiefs have to walk a narrower path with veteran pickups, and nail their draft picks to get key positions filled under cost control. The success of their approach is evidenced in the team’s starting lineup. Seventeen of the team’s 22 starters in Cleveland on Sunday were homegrown. The number for last year’s Super Bowl was 16 of 22 starters.
The result is that there’s no huge bill coming due, and the team has the flexibility to add a guy like Hopkins to its roster on the fly.
The personnel department deserves a lot of credit for this, from GM Brett Veach to assistant GM Mike Borgonzi, SVP of football operations and strategy Chris Shea and former team exec Brandt Tilis (who left for the Carolina Panthers last year), and right down to scouting directors Mike Bradway, Ryne Nutt and Tim Terry. They’ve hit in the draft. They’ve hit on free agents.
Of course, it goes without saying that they are lucky to have Mahomes and Reid to build around. But Reid and Mahomes are pretty lucky to have them, too.
• For what it’s worth, the five lowest-spending teams over those five years were, in reverse order, the Pittsburgh Steelers ($1.060 billion), Patriots ($1.084 billion), Chicago Bears ($1.088 billion), Atlanta Falcons ($1.093 billion) and Las Vegas Raiders ($1.111 billion).
I’m not sure there’s one thing tying those five together, outside of the fact that they’ve each had relatively limited quarterback spending over that period.
Oh, and this: Of those five teams, only the Steelers made the playoffs more than once in that span.
• Shout out to Mark Andrews, who broke the Baltimore Ravens’ franchise record for career touchdowns Sunday, scoring his 48th on a catch down the seam for 13 yards in a road rout of the New York Giants.
Yes, the team’s history is relatively short, only spanning 29 seasons.
Still, a tight end breaking the record, given the demands of the position, is pretty wild.
“Honestly, the record wasn’t even on my mind,” Andrews told me postgame. “It was just the fact that Lamar [Jackson] threw an incredible ball. I was on a rub route. After I got through my rub route, I saw there was a guy to my left. Just took it more vertical than I should have. He was already on the same page before I was. The ball was there. Turned my eyes, the ball was already there. I was just amazed by how on point that ball was and how he threw it.”
And that answer tells you what you need to know about Jackson’s draft classmate who, as we talked, seemed maybe most satisfied that he’d get to share the record with his quarterback, because he does see it as Jackson’s record, too.
“One hundred percent,” Andrews says. “There are countless plays where he and I are on the same page, making big-time plays and scoring points. There have been a lot of players that I’ve played with throughout the years. The O-line, the blocking, the running backs, the tight ends, my coaches, everybody. There are a lot of people to go into this record. I’m extremely thankful to be where I’m at.”
There’s a cool lesson, too, in how the Ravens got Andrews. As a third-rounder, he was the second tight end Baltimore drafted in 2018, after Hayden Hurst. Baltimore could do that because the team had 12 picks that year, and went through with it because he was, simply, the best player on their board. So, it shows the power of building a volume of picks and putting the best players on your roster.
It’s safe to say the Ravens got a really good one with the 86th pick six years ago.
• I promised more on Travis Hunter in the Monday column after getting a few scouts’ takes on him. What I want to do is really dive into how rare what he’s done at Colorado is, and what it says about him.
To set the stage, I’ll go off my own memory to try and give context. In 1997, Michigan’s Charles Woodson was an All-American corner, a top-flight return man and moonlighted as a slot receiver, and he won the Heisman as a result. The next year, Georgia’s Champ Bailey pulled off something similar, playing a little more on offense than Woodson did. Four years after that, Ohio State’s Chris Gamble actually started both ways in five games for a national championship team, and was closer to a true two-way player than the other two.
Hunter, by contrast, played 1,400 snaps as a sophomore in 2023, which led the nation by a wide margin, despite Hunter missing three and a half games due to injury. This year, he had 92 catches for 1,152 yards and 14 touchdowns on offense, added a rushing touchdown and had four interceptions for 65 return yards on defense. He won the Biletnikoff (for the nation’s best receiver) and Bednarik (for the best defensive player) awards.
Saturday, he added the Heisman Trophy to his haul. It’s safe to say that if it was NFL scouts voting, he might’ve won that particular award by a wider margin.
“He’s awesome,” says an AFC college scouting director. “I don’t think anyone has ever done what he’s done, with the kind of legitimate, impactful play he brings on both sides of the ball. … Anyone who says he’s not the best overall player in the draft is overthinking it.”
And that brings us to the next thing that’s come up pretty consistently in my discussions with scouts on Hunter: What exactly it indicates about him that he was able to pull this off.
Everyone sees what Hunter has done on Saturdays. What fewer would recognize is the mental/psychological strain a player takes on by playing both ways at that level of football. If a guy is simply a “package” player on one side or the other, it’d be relatively easy to prepare him and take advantage of his athleticism. Being fully integrated into both offensive and defensive game plans during the week is a different story.
“It shows his immense passion for the game, and immense mental toughness, to push through any amount of failure—and his cardio capacity must be insane,” says our scouting director. “I don’t know, man. If he’s not the first pick in the draft, then I guess someone just needs a quarterback that badly.”
By all accounts, the personal character checks out with Hunter, too. As for how he projects to the pros, I’ve come across a few scouts who believe he’s got a higher ceiling at corner than Michigan’s Will Johnson, and some think he’s a better corner right now. He’s different stylistically than Arizona’s Tetairoa McMillan at receiver, but in his ballpark as a prospect (Hunter acts as a slot or “Z” receiver, whereas McMillan is an “X”).
Which, of course, is to say he’s right there at the top of the board at an offensive position and a defensive position, something that is really, really remarkable. Most NFL folks believe his future will be as a full-time corner and package player on offense, even though those who know him believe he’ll push to play both ways.
Regardless, it’ll be fun to dig in on him over the next four months.
• The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have had a unique couple of months—they lost four consecutive games going into their bye, and have won four consecutive games coming out of it. And, sure, the schedule has a little something to do with it (it’s certainly been lighter of late). But, it does beg the question … What did Tampa do during the bye week?
I asked Buccaneers coach Todd Bowles. His answer was interesting.
“We really went back to basics, fundamentals and technique because we lost a lot of games on fundamentals and technique [in] the first part of the year,” Bowles says. “And it sounds corny or crazy, but we really tried to concentrate on that. We thought we were in every game. But if we just took care of us, and learned how to win in the fourth quarter, and tackle better and block better, and just take better angles all the way around, we thought we could squeeze some games out.
“The confidence grew from the first half of the year, and now we’re finishing them off in the second half.”
It sounds boring. But I don’t think it is.
As I see it, this goes back to the lack of practice time, and time in pads, these guys get in the spring and summer to establish their fundamentals, which puts the onus on coaches to stay on top of that as a season wears on. Bowles, who’s still a Bill Parcells guy at heart, has always been a big believer in creating that sort of foundation for his player. It’s certainly paying off for the Buccaneers now, with an NFC South title in sight.
• I have two takeaways from the Minnesota Vikings’ blowout of the Bears.
First, Minnesota coach Kevin O’Connell got to 12 wins for the second time in three years, becoming just the second coach in franchise history, joining Bud Grant, to post multiple 12-win regular seasons (though Grant did it when regular seasons were 14 games long). If he gets one more win, he’ll be the first Vikings coach to have multiple 13-win seasons. So, how he’s not extended yet, and extended with a fat contract, is beyond me.
Second, Monday night was confirmation that Chicago’s head coaching hire will come from outside the organization. Thomas Brown’s in a tough spot—having ascended from pass-game coordinator to offensive coordinator to head coach in less than a month—but the Bears haven’t scored a first-half point since Nov. 24, and they’ve lost by a combined score of 68–25 in his two games. The team’s brass wanted to give him a look. That look hasn’t been pretty.
• Weird anomaly from Monday: The Bears got to eight consecutive losses, the Raiders lost their 10th straight, while the Vikings are now riding a seven-game winning streak. And the Falcons, by beating Vegas, snapped a four-game losing streak.
(That’s probably only interesting to me.)
• Penn State QB Drew Allar announced this week that he plans to return for a fourth year in State College in 2025. That revelation influenced the decision made by backup/spot gadget player Beau Pribula on Sunday to leave the team before the College Football Playoff starts, with the transfer portal only staying open a few more days. It sucks, for sure, but because a nonsensical calendar is set up this way, Pribula had to pick between his present and future, and decided to choose his future.
It’s also interesting to look at from Allar’s standpoint. I talked to a couple of scouts about him last week. One said he has “plus” size, release and arm talent, and improving vision, with questions left on his ability to play off-script and handle pressure. Another called Allar a dark horse, who is raw and a bit of a projection at this point.
So, what happens if Allar crushes it and Penn State makes a run in the playoffs? He still has a month to change his mind on the NFL. And by then, Pribula will be long gone. Which, again, is just another thing that’s screwed up about college football now. (It stinks seeing such a great sport subjected to this sort of management from the powers that be.)
• Mahomes’s high ankle sprain was characterized to me as “literally day-to-day.”
As such, I’d expect the Chiefs to be careful with him at practice this week.
• On the Detroit Lions’ injuries, I thought one thing Dan Campbell said on the topic on 97.1 FM in Detroit on Tuesday was pretty notable: “We will play the game any way needed to win.”
It’s a very Parcellsian (that’s two Parcells references today if you’re keeping score) of Campbell to say that. And it’s true, too. With David Montgomery down, and the defense impossibly beat up, you’d think more will fall on Jared Goff and the passing game now.
• Finally, because I forgot to do it on Monday, I wanted to send our best to Randy Moss, who, if you missed it, is battling cancer. Lots of people in your corner, Randy! And while we’re there, that was a beautiful tribute to Moss from Justin Jefferson on Monday Night Football.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as The Chiefs Built a Dynasty With a Superstar QB and Savvy Finances.
