Few movies begin by telling viewers how the plot ends. Then again, few movies also feature someone like Patrick Mahomes.
On second thought, the fact that The Kingdom, ESPN’s new documentary about the 2024 Kansas City Chiefs season, culminates with the team’s defeat in the Super Bowl — normally the year’s most-watched television program — probably had something to do with it too.
Like a made-for-TV Columbo movie, which broadcasts the murder (and the murderer) at the start of the whodunit, The Kingdom begins with a speech from the losing locker room at Super Bowl LIX. For this film, the drama lies in the details of the journey as much as the destination.
Historic Franchise
The Kingdom then shifts focus to training camp, the very beginning of the 2024 season, when the Chiefs agreed to allow a documentary film crew to record behind-the-scenes footage of their quest for a third straight Super Bowl victory. It represents a remarkable comeback for a team that, for much of its history, had remained mired in mediocrity.
The opening episode of The Kingdom features a segment where several noteworthy Chiefs — including quarterback Mahomes, coach Andy Reid, and tight end Travis Kelce — explore an archive of historic team documents. Among the noteworthy objects: the original blueprint for what became the American Football League, founded in 1960 by Texas oilman Lamar Hunt. When the National Football League spurned his attempts to purchase an expansion franchise, Hunt and his “Foolish Club” of AFL owners created a separate league of their own.
The NFL first responded to the threat posed by the AFL by creating a new franchise in Dallas, the Cowboys, to challenge Hunt’s Dallas Texans. Hunt, never one to give up on a challenge, responded by moving his team to Kansas City and renaming the franchise. Eventually, Hunt’s tenacity and innovation — he famously coined the term “Super Bowl” — made the upstart league successful, and the NFL sued for peace. In the last game before the two leagues officially merged, Kansas City won its first Super Bowl in January 1970, with the Chiefs, as Coach Hank Stram famously remarked, matriculating the ball up and down the field in a 23-7 triumph.
Modern-Era Success
But after the fat years come the lean. For the better part of half a century, the Chiefs played in relative obscurity, never making it back to the Super Bowl. The Kingdom tells the story of how, or really who, helped change that dynamic.
To hear Chiefs General Manager Brett Veach tell it, he learned of Mahomes largely by accident. While watching Texas Tech University film to scout an offensive lineman, he realized that the team’s quarterback, Mahomes, showed uncanny talent. He made drafting the quarterback a personal mission; the Chiefs parted ways with their 2018 first-round draft pick to move up in the draft order and select Mahomes 10th overall in 2017.
At the time, the Chiefs had a high-caliber quarterback: Alex Smith, who had led the team to the playoffs for two straight seasons. But Veach and Reid saw something special in Mahomes, and, to his great credit, Smith helped to mentor the younger man who would replace him: “We signed up to play a team sport.”
The team’s gamble ultimately paid off. Mahomes led the Chiefs to the conference championship in his first year as a starter, while also pocketing the league’s Most Valuable Player award. With other core players in place like Kelce and defensive tackle Chris Jones, the Chiefs went on to win three Super Bowls in five seasons.
Challenge to Maintain Excellence
When embarking on this project, the film crew — which lists Mahomes as an executive producer — likely hoped for a conclusion similar to The Last Dance, which chronicled the capstone sixth and final championship season of Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. Fate left the Chiefs one big step short of that Cinderella ending.
But a noteworthy interview in The Kingdom put the scope of the challenge the Chiefs faced in stark relief. Former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw, who won four Super Bowls in two separate back-to-back increments, called the pressure by fans for an unprecedented third straight Super Bowl championship so great that he wished he would have retired following his fourth Super Bowl win, at the end of the 1979 season, rather than try to “three-peat.”
Injuries, age, fatigue, and player departures all play a role in weighing great times down. While the Chiefs, like the previous eight back-to-back Super Bowl winners seeking a “three-peat,” came up short, they also got closer than any of the others. The Kingdom takes viewers behind the scenes to find out how they got close — and why they came up short.
Episodes of The Kingdom will re-air on the ESPN family of networks and are available on streaming via ESPN Plus and Disney Plus.