2024 NFL Week 1 picks, best bets: Chiefs set to challenge 2007 Patriots, enter their 'Villain Era'

Will Brinson's best bets for Week 1 of the 2024 NFL season

By Will Brinson Sep 5, 2024 at 10:03 am ET• 9 min read

The Chiefs open the season on Thursday just seven months off the most inauspicious Super Bowl win ever, their second in a row. Conventional wisdom dictates Kansas City will play it safe and go full Bill Belichick: find out what your team is roughly 12 weeks in, maximize your efficiency for the playoffs, keep everyone healthy and do something no franchise has ever done -- a three-peat -- regardless of era. 

What if the Chiefs are about to launch face first into their Villain Era? It's too obvious to be allegory so let's put this more clearly: Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes might not play it safe in 2024. They might, completely unprompted by in the sense of an alleged widespread cheating scandal, just go full 2007 Patriots on the NFL. 

If you weren't there, you don't know. The Patriots didn't heel turn, per se, because they were already a problem. But the 2007 Patriots were loathed, despised and the top item on every single sports talk show every single day. There were roughly two and the internet wasn't even big. But the Pats dropped a nuclear bomb on the NFL that year to the point everyone was sports shouting about whether they should stop running up the score. 

The Chiefs might do it this year chasing unprecedented levels of team success. There are multiple reasons why -- some narrative-driven, some simply based on scheme and personnel -- but before we look at why, it's important to know the historical context of what it would mean for this Chiefs roster.