KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The rings sat in little white boxes stacked on folding tables a few steps from the Kansas City Chiefs’ practice fields. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think they were passing out sandwiches to the players on their way out of the building.

There were over 100 of them, each a glistening gold, labeled by name for anyone who was a part of last season’s team. Players. Coaches. Trainers. Staffers.

But this time there was no ceremony, no real celebration. Coach Andy Reid said a few words after Wednesday’s minicamp practice wrapped, and that was that. Then the rings no one really wanted were handed out.

Patrick Mahomes called the AFC Championship rings “a reminder.” He’ll keep his locked at the bottom of his safe at home. Mahomes stores the real ones — his three Super Bowl rings — on top. Those are the ones he wants to see.

Such is the standard in Kansas City these days: there are championship seasons, then there’s everything else. It’s a pedigree the Chiefs have earned.

“I let everybody else be happy with (that),” tight end Travis Kelce said. “Last year wasn’t a success for me, and I’m motivated to make sure we get that other ring this year.”

For Mahomes and Kelce, the faces of this Chiefs’ dynasty, February’s Super Bowl loss still stings. It probably always will. They were chasing history, trying to become the first team in the Super Bowl era to win three in a row, and the Eagles kicked them in the teeth from the first quarter on.

It’s one of the reasons Kelce resisted walking away. Deep down, he knew he couldn’t go out like that. Mahomes ranks it right up there with the disappointment he felt after the Tampa Bay Buccaneers routed the Chiefs in Super Bowl LV four years ago, later admitting, “those two losses will motivate me for the rest of my career.” Not an hour after the game was over, he took to X to shoulder the blame. “I let y’all down today,” he wrote to Chiefs fans. “We will be back.”

Mahomes admitted Wednesday that he’s rewatched the game a few times, including that night in New Orleans. He needed to; partly to process it, partly to learn from it. Vic Fangio’s Eagles defense wrecked his protection, and Mahomes slogged through one of his worst outings as a pro. Only some garbage-time touchdowns saved him from a horrendous stat line.

The humbling was so staggering, Mahomes said, that it will serve as primary fuel for his 2025 season — “nasty” was how Rick Burkholder, the Chiefs’ vice president of sports medicine and performance, described Mahomes’ post-Super Bowl demeanor during a team-sponsored event this week.

The ninth-year quarterback, entering his eighth season as starter, was especially sharp during the Chiefs’ three-day mandatory minicamp, consistently carving up the team’s secondary. He threw fewer than five incompletions in lengthy 11-on-11 work Tuesday. For once, most of his targets have returned from last season, including Kelce and a collection of receivers — Rashee Rice, Xavier Worthy, Hollywood Brown and JuJu Smith-Schuster — that should be the Chiefs’ deepest since Tyreek Hill was on the roster.

The aim, Mahomes noted this spring, is to rediscover the explosiveness that defined his early years as starter, when the Chiefs scared defenses every single Sunday. That wasn’t the case in 2024. For a 15-2 team quarterbacked by one of the all-time greats, they were stunningly mediocre on that side of the ball.

The reasons have been well-documented: the Chiefs were lousy on the offensive line and banged up at receiver. Kelce regressed. Mahomes, too, played a role: he looked mortal for most of the season, finishing with the fewest touchdown passes of his career (26), his lowest yards per attempt (6.8) and his lowest yards-per-game average (245.5). The Chiefs were 15th in the league in points scored, same as 2023, their worst finishes in that category since the Alex Smith era.

That they made it to a seventh consecutive AFC Championship and third consecutive Super Bowl is a testament to both coach and quarterback: Reid and Mahomes remain the conference’s biggest roadblock, the mountain that Josh Allen’s Bills and Lamar Jackson’s Ravens have yet to summit. Give Steve Spagnuolo’s defense its due, as well. Mahomes said Wednesday that one of his goals for 2025 was to see his unit become what the Chiefs’ defense already is: one of the league’s best.

Thus the push this spring to find the answers Kansas City couldn’t last season. For the most part, the Chiefs stopped taking the top off defenses; they finished 27th in passing plays of 20 yards or more. What used to be a staple — Mahomes dropping back and unfurling a bomb, or Mahomes escaping the pocket and finding a wide-open Kelce in space — has become exceedingly rare.

Simply put, they’re not scaring teams like they used to.

Reid has challenged his quarterback all spring to push the ball down the field more, to play more aggressively and to give his wideouts chances for chunk plays. “We have guys that can roll,” Mahomes said, hinting at the speed his receiving corps can offer. “Our job is to test the defenses down the field, and we have to get back to doing that if we want to open up other guys underneath.”

The continuity at tight end and receiver should help; so should a reworked offensive line that, with a few new faces, is motivated to erase the stain of February’s embarrassment. “Pretty devastating,” guard Mike Caliendo called the Super Bowl loss. “Failing is growth. It was not up to the standard.”

For a team that for years has instilled fear into the rest of the AFC, this version could even be even scarier: the Chiefs weren’t just humbled their last time out, they were left fuming. It began with the star quarterback. Like so many greats, the gutting losses seem to stay with Mahomes longer than the biggest wins. He was on the doorstep of history; now, another chase begins.

Mahomes is just 29, remember, and in the thick of his prime. He’ll spend the four weeks off before training camp grinding with his personal trainer, Bobby Stroupe, and vowed Wednesday “to be ready to go whenever we step on that football field.” From there, it’s full go.

A long season awaits. If the quarterback ever needs a reminder of how the last one ended, and how four months of almost uninterrupted success was spoiled by three wretched hours of football, all he’ll have to do is open up the safe in his home and stare at the ring he never wanted.