Comment from Chiefs starter erases key concern for 2023 season
The Kansas City Chiefs will enter the 2023 season as the team to beat in the NFL. Kansas City beat the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LVII, earning their second Super Bowl victory in the last three years. As a result, the Chiefs will have a target on their backs in 2023. Everyone wants to […]
The Kansas City Chiefs will enter the 2023 season as the team to beat in the NFL.
Kansas City beat the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LVII, earning their second Super Bowl victory in the last three years.
As a result, the Chiefs will have a target on their backs in 2023. Everyone wants to be the team that knocks off the champs.
Fortunately for Kansas City, there's still an organic hunger in the locker room to prove the doubters wrong.
The Chiefs thrived last season on the media suggesting that Kansas City's reign in the AFC West was nearing its end.
Kansas City responded with its seventh straight AFC West division title (and that aforementioned win in Super Bowl LVII).
Just because the Chiefs are the champs doesn't mean the chip on their shoulder has been removed. This team still feels like it has a lot to prove. And that's evident from recent comments made by second-year running back Isiah Pacheco.
Pacheco, a seventh-round pick in the 2022 NFL Draft, won't be changing his playing style just because one of his 10 fingers is now occupied by a Super Bowl ring (or will be once the rings are delivered).
The former Rutgers standout made it clear to ESPN this week that he will always feel like he has to prove the doubters wrong after being a late-round draft pick.
“As a seventh-round pick, I always had something to prove, for the doubters,” said Pacheco. “If you dream big, you could go get it, go grab it. That's something I always had in mind of being on this stage, on this level. It feels unreal, but it's real and it's here and so I have to embrace it.”
That kind of mindset is contagious. And he's far from the only one in the locker room that feels that way.
Immediately after winning Super Bowl LVII, superstar tight end Travis Kelce decried the disrespect that Kansas City received all season.
Kelce is clearly still miffed at how the media treated the Chiefs in 2022. And you can best bet that he, along with Pacheco, will have an edge to his game in 2023 despite KC's status as the team to beat in the NFL.
And that bodes well for Kansas City's odds of repeating. There's nothing more dangerous than a talented team that's motivated to prove people wrong.
