The Chiefs embrace their role as the most-hated team before Super Bowl
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NEW ORLEANS — Trent McDuffie can’t remember the year. All he remembers of his first Super Bowl memory was cheering against the New England Patriots.
So when the Patriots lost in a Super Bowl to the Giants, McDuffie relentlessly teased his younger brother, who was rooting for New England. From hoping to see the fall of one football dynasty, the Kansas City Chiefs’ cornerback is now in position to keep another one going.
Almost two decades after the Patriots established themselves as the dominant NFL force, the Chiefs have become the league’s new evil empire, taking the most-hated torch from the Patriots while trying to accomplish something even the NFL’s greatest dynasty never did.
The Chiefs can become the first team to win three consecutive Super Bowls on Sunday against the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LIX. Kansas City is embracing its role as the NFL antihero in a rematch of the 2022 Super Bowl that the Chiefs won.
“Being the villain comes with its own profound respect,” said McDuffie, who is already a two-time Super Bowl champion at 24 years old. “Nobody hates the team that isn’t winning. You hate the team that’s successful. So for me, being called the villain just tells me we’re being successful.”
Fans groan about the team’s overexposure in commercials and media. They accuse referees of favoritism. The fatigue grows more each time the Chiefs — who are playing in their fifth Super Bowl in the last six years — strong-arm AFC rivals Baltimore or Buffalo away from long-awaited breakthroughs.
Breaking down the matchups, key players and the winner of the 2025 Super Bowl between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles.
“Sports fandom has this love element, but also has this hate element,” said Mike Lewis, a marketing professor at Emory University and author of “Fandom Analytics.” “We hate our rivals.”
It’s not just that the Chiefs win, Lewis said, keeping other dedicated AFC fan bases out. It’s that they’ve reached dynasty level on the field and their star players have become ubiquitous off it.
Quarterback Patrick Mahomes is a pitchman for insurance, shampoo and ketchup. He often bundles his commercials with Andy Reid, his mustachioed head coach. Tight end Travis Kelce is dating Taylor Swift, the world’s most famous pop star, and hosts a weekly podcast with his brother that is among the three most popular sports podcasts on Apple and Spotify.
“[The Chiefs] get all the attention in the world,” Lewis said. “So for a lot of fans, for the hardcore fans who view the Chiefs as rivals, it’s almost like they get their noses rubbed into it over and over.”
The Chiefs’ recent success has helped the team leap from the bottom third of Lewis’ annual fandom rankings into the top five this year, signaling their arrival as a powerful brand for the NFL. They were once a small-market team that hadn’t won a Super Bowl in 50 years. Their quarterback liked ketchup on his steak and sounded like a green frog Muppet. Reid, who spent 14 seasons as the Eagles head coach, could never seem to win the big one.
The Patriots were similarly an underdog team.
Before Tom Brady married a supermodel and won seven Super Bowls, he was the sixth-round draft pick who was thrown into action because of an injury to starter Drew Bledsoe. It felt right for a country reeling from the 9/11 terrorist attacks that the team named the Patriots would win the next Super Bowl, knocking off the Rams’ “Greatest Show on Turf.” It was New England’s first league championship.
“We were the darlings,” former Patriots linebacker Tedy Bruschi said.
That sentiment started to shift in 2007, Bruschi noted. While the Patriots completed the league’s first 16-0 regular season, the fan response during away games grew more hostile as the winning continued.
Now an NFL analyst for ESPN, Bruschi sees the comparisons between his Patriots and today’s Chiefs but doesn’t understand the hate. As someone whose own quest for a historic three-peat was spoiled, Bruschi relishes the chance to witness unprecedented excellence because he respects the work required to pull it off.
The Chiefs are returning the sentiment.
“I think more than anything,” Mahomes said, “I appreciate the greatness [of the] Patriots more now when I see how hard it was to do what they did.”
Tom Brady says he’s far from a finished product but he’s enjoying learning how to be a broadcaster while being a Raiders minority owner. He’s Fox’s analyst for Super Bowl LIX.
On Sunday, Mahomes will become just the third quarterback to start five Super Bowls, joining Brady and Joe Montana. Not yet 30 years old, Mahomes can become the fourth quarterback to win four Super Bowls, tying Montana and Terry Bradshaw. Brady, who will be calling the game for Fox, set the standard with seven.
Mahomes, who grew up a Dallas Cowboys fan, admitted he was rooting against Brady’s Patriots during their dominant run. Now atop the league, Mahomes said he’s grown comfortable playing the villain, but his teammates have a different word for the role.
“He’s more like a superhero, man,” Chiefs running back Kareem Hunt said. “All the dude does is win, and if you want to be mad at him for winning football games, go ahead. But that’s a superhero to me.”
Staff writer Sam Farmer contributed to this report.
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