Since winning Super Bowl 57, Chiefs players have been adamant there were haters who doubted them. Brittany Mahomes brought the receipts though.
When you heard numerous members of the Super Bowl-champion Kansas City Chiefs talk about the “haters” and people who doubted the team coming into the 2023 season, Travis Kelce in particular, the general reaction has been to scoff at the thought. After all, who would dare discredit a team with Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid?
Simply put, there has been an air of disbelief around the narrative that the Chiefs clearly bought into this season. Sure, it’s not Kirby Smart somehow selling the Georgia Bulldogs on their underdog status, but it does seem a bit odd. For anyone who didn’t think the narrative about Kansas City was real, though, Brittany Mahomes kept some receipts.
On the heels of the Chiefs Super Bowl parade, the wife of the Super Bowl MVP-winning quarterback took to Twitter to provide proof that, if nothing else, at least one national pundit on ESPN definitely doubted Kansas City coming into the year.
Brittany Mahomes kept the receipts for preseason hate on Chiefs
Okay, so maybe Bart Scott is the most extreme end of the spectrum. Predicting that this team would miss the playoffs was a bit outlandish even at the time.
With that said, it feels a bit like revisionist history that people are discrediting the idea that people doubted the Chiefs. No, not everyone thought they’d fall out of the playoffs. However, once the team traded Tyreek Hill after failing to make the Super Bowl a season ago along with the Broncos acquiring Russell Wilson and the Raiders trading for Davante Adams, there was indeed some doubt.
There were undeniably a number of people who thought the Chiefs might not win the AFC West. Just as much, there were people who thought the team definitely wasn’t as good as the Buffalo Bills or maybe even the Cincinnati Bengals. It was a real thing that happened.
Sometimes, we conflate the idea that a team had doubters with the players thinking they were underdogs. That was never the case, to be sure. The notion that Kansas City could take a step back, however, was brought up.
Brittany Mahomes remembered the most egregious example of this. But Bart Scott wasn’t alone in casting uncertainty over the Chiefs. It doesn’t matter now, though. In a few months, Mahomes, Kelce and the rest of the team can just point to the new ring on their fingers.