The presents needed to be opened. It was Christmas night, after all, inside the Kansas City–area mansion of the greatest player in professional football.
Patrick Mahomes preferred the wrapping paper stay on every present. There wasn’t much to celebrate and what he had hoped to enjoy—a win over the Las Vegas Raiders that afternoon in front of an increasingly skeptical home crowd—instead became a 20–14 loss, another stumble in a season that seemed to be teetering toward collapse. “Definitely never had a worse Christmas,” Mahomes said 10 days before his team’s 25–22 overtime win in Super Bowl LVIII.
[Buy now! Relive Super Bowl LVIII with ’s commemorative issue]
Those . Two adorable young children teemed with excitement their father could not muster. He tried hiding his angst, as 2-year-old Sterling marveled at the bouncy house her parents had set up in the basement. He tried summoning kid Christmas energy, studying 1-year-old Patrick III, better known as Bronze, who opened a new basketball hoop.
All preseason, everyone in Kansas City sounded some version of the same theme: never satisfied. Travis Kelce said the chatter started the same night last February when the Kansas City Chiefs toppled the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LVII. All knew that no NFL champion had repeated since the New England Patriots in 2004, when Kelce was in high school and a few hundred receptions from catching the eye of Taylor Swift. That night, as dozens of lips smeared and smudged the Lombardi Trophy, all eyes pointed forward, ahead, Kelce says. “Two in a row,” teammates kept repeating.
The veterans hadn’t seized upon the same opportunity in 2020 after their first triumph against the 49ers. “And we’ve wanted that feeling of redemption,” Kelce says, “ever since.” He laughs, adding, “Just thinking about it is getting me fired up.” He was saying this before kickoff against San Francisco.
Kelce . Deeply, implicitly, confidently, . He understood what Mahomes told members of his inner circle on Christmas night. That a franchise once defined by late-postseason losses and what the team’s founder referred to as “buzzard’s luck,” was now an international brand with a worldwide following. This season, Kansas City assembled its best defense of the Mahomes era. It had a good luck charm in Kelce’s Grammy-winning girlfriend. It had survived five playoff runs that unfolded like five lifetimes, with the Chiefs always on the verge of cementing a dynasty.
Mahomes hoped his children were young enough that they would forget the Christmas where Dad wasn’t his usual, jovial self. But he was oddly certain about the season, anyway.
That night, Mahomes discussed the seesawing of 2023 with his private coach, Jeff Christensen, all the dropped passes and close losses that portended doom.
“We’re going to win the Super Bowl,” Mahomes said. Just like that. Simple. Declarative. Firm.
The gift he wanted, he would have to .
