Sorry about this Kansas City Chiefs Nation – and apologies for another Swift reference – but in the world we live in now, get ready because “the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate,” You’ve put up with a lot of vitriol this past week as pundits pilloried the defending Super Bowl Champions and heir apparent to the Tom Brady-Bill Belichick New England Patriots. And after winning again Sunday, more is on the way.

The good news for Chiefs fans was that while the haters were busy loathing the Chiefs and their consummate-winning quarterback Patrick Mahomes, all Chiefs fans had to do to feel better was recall another line from the same song: “Players gonna play, play, play, play, play.” And that’s what happened at Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas as the Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers 25-22 in overtime, winning the third of the last five Super Bowls.

The players played, played, played, played.

Mahomes threw and ran for 399 total yards and led the Chiefs on a 13-play, 75-yard overtime drive that had ended with a touchdown pass completed with three seconds on the clock. And he did so with the kind of cool, clinical focus we’ve come to expect of him when the game is on the line. Mahomes’ leadership earned him his third MVP trophy but made me ask afterwards, why were Kansas City and Mahomes cast as villains in the week leading up to the Championship?