Harrison: Chiefs Will Become Greatest Dynasty With A Win

Karenson, how are you, man? Hey, JR, man. How you doing this evening, man?

I appreciate you having me on today. Oh, absolutely. This is just like old hats of you.

Nothing to see. Same old, same old, huh? Yeah, it's funny, man.

So many of my friends have been asking me, you know, hey, what's Super Bowl week like? And I don't like it. I mean, this is the fifth time that I've done it before. But, you know, like, you know, you start to pick up on things. You know how to manage your time a little bit better.

You know how to book guests. You know how that goes. I mean, from a football perspective, and I'm sure we'll talk about it over the course of this conversation, you know, over the last three years, every challenge that the Chiefs have had, they have figured out a way to solve it. I mean, even when it didn't look like it. You know, whenever they lose Rishi Wright, you're thinking, hey, I don't know about that wide receiver room. They lost Hollywood Brown. They lost Isaiah Pacheco at one point last year. I mean, last year's team, they went 500 the final eight weeks of the season, and they have just continued to figure things out where, I mean, they have won 23 of the last 24 games. And right now we are looking at a team that can go from being one of the greatest dynasties of all time to being number one. There have been five dynasties in league history. The Chiefs are one of them.

They have a chance to put themselves number one on the list if they win on Sunday against Philadelphia. Well, Carrington, you talk about one of the big injuries and issues earlier on in the season is someone like Rishi Rice. And we look at the team and we look at the numbers of Patrick Mahomes this season. What makes this iteration, what makes this 2024 edition of the Kansas City Chiefs different from past ones?

That's a great question. It's funny because I wouldn't say that there's really a lot different from maybe some of the better teams. This team is just master winning close games. You've got to think, what is it, you know, 60%, 70% of NFL games are decided by one possession. The Chiefs are 17-0 in those games over the last couple of years or so, where if this game is close, and a lot of people think it's going to be close, the spread is Chiefs are one and a half point favorite. The Chiefs have just won that game every single time this season, where maybe if you replay this season, Kansas City goes 14-3 or has a different record.

But just every time it's been close and Kansas City has needed a play, they have made that play every single time. Carrington Harrison is here with us, the chair of our sport re-show Coast to Coast. Travis Kelce is 35 years old. People take a look at his numbers and they go, oh, it's not 1,000 yards up, it's not 10 touchdowns. Is he just turning it on when it matters? What's the deal with him and his career where it stands?

That's a great question. I mean, he played great in the Houston game. He wasn't so great in the AFC Championship game. I don't think that this team maybe needs Travis to be the superhero that he's been in the postseason. We're talking about one of the five best postseason players that we've ever seen, and we're talking non-quarterbacks. You know, Julian Edelman was one of those guys, Jerry Rice.

Travis Kelce has been one of those kind of guys. A big conversation that I've been asked doing these shows this week is, do I think Travis is going to come back next year? It's just financially in his best interest to come back. So at the beginning of the season, he renegotiated his deal to basically lock in two seasons. So Travis would get $11.5 million on March 14th if he is on the team.

I think he's going to be on the team. He also then gets an extra million dollars if he reports to training camp, which why would he not report to training camp? So we're talking about $12 million guaranteed heading into, you know, basically week one of training camp. And then he gets $6 million in game checks next year.

So that's a pretty healthy amount of money. So I think that Kelce is going to be back. And it's funny because this is kind of a game where, I guess, going back to the Super Bowl, I'm not really sure what to expect from Travis Kelce. You can tell me that he has 100 yards in this game. You could tell me that he has 30 yards in this game, that he's that kind of postseason player that obviously you can't count him out. But you've got Kareem Hunt running at a high level. You've got Xavier Worthy. Juju Smith-Schuster had 60 yards in the AFC Championship game. So maybe the biggest difference between this year's team and last year's Chiefs team is they just have far more options on offense than they did a year ago.

Well, Carenson, you mentioned Xavier Worthy, that gift from the Buffalo Bills. How has he evolved from the beginning of the season to what we see now? He seems to be a whole lot more impactful later in the season.

Oh, 100 percent. He had a rough October. He was bad in the month of October.

I thought that the Chiefs were basically just trying to hit home runs with them. They just were trying to hit that deep pass and they weren't really using him in that kind of intermediate and kind of screen game role. They really had him take over what we saw Rice doing. If you remember, Rice was kind of the same way last year. He really came on the second half of the season and started playing well.

I think they've gotten Worthy kind of in that same role where, you're right, he's been great. I mean, he was their best skill position player in the AFC Championship game. Had over 100 yards from scrimmage. Had 86 receiving yards. Had 16 on the ground in the run game. So I'm expecting a big game from him just with how they use him. And you're right, he has really grown over the last six to eight weeks for the Chiefs.

Carrington, the guy who's throwing him the ball. You take a look at Patrick Mahomes. Everybody is looking at three in a row and it may not be seven or six championships, but it's not shabby.

Three in a row plus one. What is your thought on the standing of Mahomes if he accomplishes a three-peat on Sunday night? My big point has been that Patrick has to do things that Tom didn't accomplish. I mean, Tom did just about everything you can do in the National Football League. You know, we never thought we'd see a team win every regular season game. We saw the Patriots do it. We saw him win six championships in New England, one to one with the Buccaneers. So there's no doubt that the Tom Brady resume is incredibly impressive. But if you're Patrick Mahomes and in this game you've got a chance to do the one thing that eluded Tom, which is to win three in a row. There's no other great quarterback that can say they've done this.

Montana was great. Peyton Manning was great. Tom Brady was great. Any quarterback in the Super Bowl era hasn't been able to win three in a row.

And you talk about the start that he's gotten into, and part of this conversation is with how premature it is. I mean, he is 29 years old. Brady won a championship in his 40s. Brady probably had his best season in New England by, what, year seven, year eight when he was in his 30s back in 2007. So a lot of this stuff with Mahomes is a testament to how early he's gotten things going. In that regard, I mean, he's probably like Tiger Woods.

You remember Tiger, there was a lot of conversation early in his career, and he answered a lot of that stuff very only on by just being so dominant. Pat's the same way. Do you think we're going to get a repeat of what we saw two years ago, the Chiefs are going to hoist another Lombardi?

I think so. I mean, I kind of mentioned it earlier. We're just, I mean, this team has won 23 of its last 24 games. Patrick, he has played in 20 postseason games. They've won 17 of those, and you're telling me to pick the other team? It feels like we've done this now three straight times where people are arguing, well, Kansas City has the better quarterback, but I like the Eagles for, you know, roster spots two through 53.

Same thing with San Francisco last year. This team just figures out ways to win, and we talked about this on my radio show earlier today, where if you go back to four of the last five Super Bowls, it requires your quarterback to make a drive with less than five minutes to go to go win the game. Mahomes has made three of those drives in the last five Super Bowls. If you were talking about in this game, if it's going to be close, you are going to ask Jalen Hurts to take his team down the field to score a touchdown. Do you think he can score a touchdown? I don't think he can score a touchdown, and that's why I'm picking Kansas City to win this game 27-20.

Hey, Carrington, last question for you. Based on the success you expect them to have on Sunday, do you think that we will see head coach Andy Reid eventually catch up to Shula? He got about 46 more wins.

Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, Andy has rejuvenated to be the head coach of the Chiefs. I don't think he's retiring anytime soon. To me, the real question is, can he catch Bill Belichick? Because you've got to remember, Belichick only really won with Tom Brady. We saw Andy Reid take Philadelphia to the Super Bowl. We saw him win before Patrick Mahomes got there in Kansas City. Andy is making a case of being the best coach during the salary cap era.

We can go back to pre-salary cap, and I know it's a different football game, but in the salary cap era, it has been Belichick in a pretty wide gap between him and everybody else. But Andy is closing that gap each and every Sunday. And we're going to see if the Chiefs keep on winning, winning, winning. Carrington, tell everybody where they can find you, listen to you, because I know you are all over the place.

Full of sense. Yeah, you guys can hear me coming up in the morning on the Harrison experience from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. right here on the Infinity Sports Network. And, Carrington, we appreciate you. Enjoy Louisiana. Enjoy the Sunday. Have a good show tomorrow. Always a pleasure, my man. J.R., I appreciate you, man. Thanks a bunch.