KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Much as Patrick Mahomes has been a singularly stellar force in the emergence of the Chiefs as a perennial AFC Championship Game team and their first Super Bowl triumph in 50 years, his play has been augmented by being part of a phenomenal trifecta.
Tight end Travis Kelce and receiver Tyreek Hill are spectacular talents, year by year building Pro Football Hall of Fame cases, and Mahomes has enjoyed an uncanny sense of connection with each of his complementary targets.
That dynamic has been the ever-pulsing core of one of the most mesmerizing offenses in NFL history, a living, breathing synergistic marvel that has shown up in Mahomes anticipating where Kelce is going even when Kelce isn’t sure. And in Mahomes being able to find Hill open downfield in such a variety of ways (including “Jet Chip Wasp” in Super Bowl LIV) as to inspire a meme that suggests Mahomes just guesses and throws deep.
“All three of them trust each other, and that’s important,” coach Andy Reid said not long ago. “They have that innate ability to know where the guy is going to be against whatever leverage the defender has on them. I appreciate that. … And it sure helps to have that chemistry when teams are showing you a bunch of different looks.”
As of Wednesday afternoon, though, the Chiefs were going with a momentously different look of their own after contract-extension negotiations with Hill stalled out. The six-time Pro Bowl receiver was traded to the Miami Dolphins for five draft picks: first-, second- and fourth-round picks this year and fourth- and sixth-round picks in 2023.
That might make for a nice haul overall … in the long run.
But no matter how much this might have become a necessity because of financial loggerheads and the broader realities of the Chiefs’ finances, and no matter how much it amplifies an evident transition to a younger (and more cost-efficient) roster, it’s hard to embrace this deal in the moment without even one tangible face to put to it as the Chiefs bid farewell to one of the most exhilarating football forces any of us has ever seen.
In time we’ll know what the deal really stands for, and chances are the Chiefs ultimately will prosper by it and be better girded for a longer window of opportunity in the Mahomes Era.
But this represents the end of an era in itself.
Because it’s virtually impossible to replicate what Hill meant to the Chiefs’ offense, particularly in his symmetry with Kelce’s skill-set. Between Kelce’s dazzling elusiveness and maneuverability for his size to Hill’s spellbinding speed and underappreciated pure-receiver skills, each made the other (and Mahomes) geometrically better than the sum of their own considerable parts.
So without knowing moves to come or any deeper strategy at play here, on the surface it’s impossible to see any way this deal makes the Chiefs better in 2022.
All that seems apparent in the moment is that an initial priority this offseason is some combination of reducing payroll and getting younger. Hence, gone is the 28-year-old Hill, who had 111 of his 479 career receptions last season, with the only known reinforcement now 25-year-old JuJu Smith-Schuster.
And that mentality also seems reflected in such moves as adding 25-year-old safety Justin Reid to the apparent neglect of 29-year-old safety Tyrann Mathieu, who remains unsigned.
Assuming the Chiefs indeed don’t re-sign Mathieu, they’ll have lost two of their four or five most vital players, men who were pillars of this reboot of the franchise to a level of competitiveness it seldom, if ever, has known before.
With that, we can only wonder how much our anticipation of the next few years should be doused.
Yes, Reid is a Hall of Fame-bound coach, and general manager Brett Veach has been instrumental. They’ve earned the benefit of the doubt on where this is all going.
To be sure, it’s not the first time in their tenure together that bold and seemingly curious moves have been made: cutting linebacker Justin Houston and safety Eric Berry in 2019 are two that come to mind. But those maneuvers helped clear the way for the signing of Mathieu and trade for defensive Frank Clark.
Until we know more about the Chiefs’ current cosmic strategy, and until we see who these draft picks they’re getting become, all we really know now is that the Chiefs have traded away one of the linchpins of Mahomes’ success and one of the most captivating players in the game today — including for his remarkable array of antics and celebrations on the field.
Off the field, Hill at times was as confounding to cover for the media as he was for opposing defenses.
At least I’ll speak for myself here: When the Chiefs drafted him in 2016 a year after he pleaded guilty to domestic assault and battery by strangulation of his pregnant girlfriend in 2014, I thought it was a disgrace.
Then I was persuaded by his redemptive arc, including calling the Payne County (Oklahoma) assistant DA for domestic violence when his three-year deferred sentence came to an end and the case was dismissed in 2018. Everything suggested he had been on the right trail.
“I don’t have any reason to disagree with that,” Debra Vincent, the assistant DA said then, adding, “Who’s to say that this wasn’t life-changing in how he looked at that part of his life?”
Only months later, though, there was utter chaos in the wake of a child-abuse probe involving Hill and former fiancee Crystal Espinal that included surreptitiously made tapes. That spurred what effectively became a suspension by the Chiefs and a four-month NFL investigation before the league ruled it “cannot conclude” he violated its personal conduct policy, and he was reinstated.
The haze of 2019 left impressions of him off the field largely in the eye of the beholder.
But there was no room for interpretation when it came to Hill’s work on the field. He was part of a magical time, instrumental in it, even, and the Chiefs will be hard-pressed to approximate the dimension he gave them.
