Chiefs sunset

 It ended perhaps the only way it could have, with the face of the franchise rolling around on the ground, clutching his faithless left knee. With Patrick Mahomes down and, finally, out, just as his Kansas City Chiefs were down and, finally, out.

Call that harmonic convergence, if you like. Or a symbolic ride into the sunset, except Mahomes wasn't riding but limping gingerly down the tunnel toward the locker room, supported on either side by Chiefs personnel.

Just as his Chiefs were, symbolically.

Back out on the field, see, Gardner Minshew stepped in and threw a couple of passes to Travis Kelce, and then threw another to Kelce that had nowhere near enough air under it. Derwin James intercepted it for the Los Angeles Chargers, sealing the Bolts' 16-13 win and making it official.

For the first time since 2014, the Chiefs -- Mahomes and Kelce and Chris Jones and all the rest -- were eliminated from the playoffs.

At 6-8, they've now lost five of their last six games, including two straight at home, and if they're riding into the sunset, that sunset has come quickly -- as it tends to do whenever a great run comes to an end. A team that has played in five of the last six Super Bowls, winning three of them, got old and washed in a hurry. That sometimes is as much perception than reality, but nonetheless.

Travis Kelce, for instance?

He's almost 37, thinking about retirement and looking like it; this season he's dropped balls he used to catch in his sleep. Defensive line anchor Chris Jones? He's only 31, but it's an old 31; he's not the force he once was. And Mahomes?

He's just 30, but it's a battered 30. He's playing behind a spit-and-baling-wire offensive line that's starting two rookies, his left knee was hindering him long before he tore the ACL Sunday, and his wide receivers are mid. He's not the same Mahomes right now, and the Chiefs are not the Chiefs.

Lots of people will celebrate this, having grown weary of the whole Kelce-Tayor Swift thing, or of seeing Kelce or Mahomes in every freaking commercial on the tube these days, or so it seems.

Over-exposure breeds contempt. Too much success breeds contempt. It's why everyone outside New England got sick of Tom Brady and Bill Belichick and the Patriots during their incredible 20-year run, and why some folks undoubtedly got sick of the Bill Walsh/Joe Montana 49ers and the Chuck Noll/Terry Bradshaw Steelers and, hell, maybe even the Lombardi/Starr Packers. 

And so, yes, half of America likely watched Mahomes go down and Minshew throw the pick and thought, "Thank God we won't have to watch the Chiefs in the playoffs again." 

Which is understandable, I suppose, given that it's been 11 years since we weren't watching the Chiefs in the playoffs. Or since the last time we saw them win fewer than 10 games was 2014 -- when they won nine. Or since the only time in the last six years we haven't seen them in the Super Bowl was 2021. 

In fact, you have to go back 13 years to find a time when the Chiefs were truly awful. That was 2012, when they finished 2-14. Romeo Crennel was the head coach then. He's been retired since 2022.

Rode off into the sunset, in other words. Just as the Chiefs, so horrible then and so sublime since, perhaps rode off with their quarterback yesterday.

Excuse me. Limped off.