KSHB 41 reporter Tod Palmer covers sports business and eastern Jackson County. Share your story idea with Tod.
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As the 2024 NFL season dawns with the Kansas City Chiefs on the cusp of immortality, the Kingdom is, in a word, confident.
No team in league history has ever won three consecutive Super Bowls — not the Steel Curtain teams in the 1970s, Joe Montana’s 49ers in the 1980s, Dallas early-1990s dynasty, nor Tom Brady’s Patriots.
But that’s the mission for Patrick Mahomes, Andy Reid, Travis Kelce, Chris Jones and company this season after collecting Lombardi trophies from Super Bowls LVII and LVIII.
Win another from Super Bowl LIX on Feb. 9, 2025, at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans and Kansas City will have forcefully staked a claim as the greatest team in NFL history.
“Of course we can do it,” Chiefs fan Donnell Moore said Wednesday outside the Sunfresh at East 31st Street and Prospect Avenue. “It’s never been done before, so I still say it’s impossible until it gets done. I want them to do it, though. Go Chiefs.”
Moore added, “They can make the impossible possible. We’ve got Patrick Mahomes, Justin Reid and them, Isaiah Pacheco and all them boys, Chris Jones, Creed Humphrey. We’ve still got a good team.”
That confidence was apparent across town at Union Station as well, where fans trickled through to snap Instagram-worthy family pictures throughout the day.
Ashlee King and her son, Adriano, were among those making use of the various photo-op backdrops, including life-size cutouts of Mahomes and Kelce.
“I feel full confidence in these two,” King said with an arm outstretched toward cardboard Kelce and two-dimensional Mahomes. “It’s going to happen and we believe it because these two men are going to make sure they take us there.”
Miriam Young, who was shopping at a merchandise tent at the intersection of Dr. Martin Lurther King Jr. Boulevard and Hardesty Avenue, agreed.
“They won before, so why not?” Young said when asked if the Chiefs could three-peat.
She was out shopping for a shirt from her son on Red Wednesday, but she already had her game-day apparel picked out — and it’s a nod to one of Kansas City’s biggest offseason moves, extending Jones’ contract.
“For one, Chris Jones is coming back,” Young said when asked to explain why she’s so confident in the 2024 Chiefs, “and I’ve already got my shirt.”
Meanwhile, back at Union Station, Duane Rivers wandered the grounds Wednesday with his girlfriend Kristine. The couple traveled nearly 1,300 miles from Hudson Falls, New York, to see the quest for a three-peat kick off in person.
“We’re on vacation and this is the only place we wanted to go on vacation,” he said. “We wanted to go to the home opener.”
The Chiefs kick off a new season Thursday against the Baltimore Ravens in a rematch of last year’s AFC Championship Game. The game airs on KSHB 41 with pregame coverage beginning at 4 p.m.
There are, of course, no guarantees Kansas City returns to the Super Bowl, but Las Vegas is showing the same confidence as Chiefs Kingdom — installing Mahomes and company as the odds-on favorites to win the Super Bowl again.
“The other teams are getting better,” Moore said. “They want to beat the Chiefs because we’ve won it twice in a row, but we’re the team to beat until they beat us.”
If he could deliver a message in the locker room before the game, Moore said he’d tell the Chiefs, “You’ve gotta fight for your right to party, like Travis Kelce says.”
That’s the plan, Donnell. That’s the plan.
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