Last week, the Kansas City Chiefs informed their number one cornerback L’Jarius Sneed of a franchise tag-like deal and are open to completing a trade if no long-term agreements are made.

The nonexclusive franchise tag that the Chiefs are offering would cost about $19 million for the 2024 season, per reports. It’s a tag that Chiefs general manager Brett Veach had said was either going to be used on Sneed or defensive end Chris Jones if they were unable to re-sign both of them by the start of free agency.

Now it will belong to Sneed.

The scenario is ideal for Sneed, as he will have the chance to talk with other teams while the Chiefs will remain an option during his free agency, although he is expected to stick with the Chiefs and their growing dynasty.

Since joining the Chiefs as a fourth-round draft pick in 2020, Sneed has become an increasingly important defensive player. In his first five seasons in the NFL, Sneed has gone to the Super Bowl four times and won three rings. Experts around the league have recognized his most recent Super Bowl title season as Sneed’s best year yet.

Sneed, 27, didn’t allow a touchdown pass as the nearest player in coverage all season until the Chiefs’ divisional-round playoff win against the Buffalo Bills.

In 2023, he covered the opponent’s top receiver on at least 65% of the snaps seven times during the regular season. Apart from Davante Adams’ five catches for 73 yards on Sneed in a week 12 game, none of those receivers were able to catch more than two passes.

Most recently, Sneed has blown up for his performance in the AFC Championship game against the Baltimore Ravens, where he lined up against Zay Flowers 21 times. He allowed one touchdown catch for 54 yards but also made one of the biggest plays of his career, punching the ball out of Flowers’ hands to force a fumble, which the Chiefs would recover on the one-yard line.

That play took a touchdown away from the Ravens in what became a 17-10 win for the Chiefs and evolved into their fourth Super Bowl appearance in the past five seasons.

The longest Super Bowl in history will now go down as also the most-watched program in television history.

According to Nielsen and Adobe Analytics, the Kansas City Chiefs’ 25-22 overtime victory over the San Fransisco 49ers on Sunday averaged 123.7 million viewers across all television services and streaming platforms. That’s a shattering 7% increase over the 115.1 million viewers for last year’s Super Bowl, which Kansas City also won, but against a different opponent in the Philadelphia Eagles.

Apart from the NFL’s digital platforms, the game was televised on CBS through Nickelodeon, Univision and Paramount+.

Nielsen also reported that a record 202.4 million people watched at least part of the game this year, which is a 10% jump over last year’s 183.6 million. The increase can be partially attributed to Nielsen’s change in the way they count their viewers, as they expanded to counting out-of-home viewers starting this year.

Another aspect that attracted new viewers was the appearance of a certain pop-star musician Taylor Swift, who attended almost all of the Chiefs games this year as she is dating the Chiefs star tight end Travis Kelce. Kelce had a slow first half but turned up in the second half and overtime for a total of nine catches and 93 yards on ten  targets.

It’s fair to say that most swifties weren’t exactly fans of the NFL before Kelce.

Super Bowl LVIII was also the second-ever Super Bowl to go to overtime. The last one was in 2017 when the New England Patriots came back from a 28-3 deficit to beat the Atlanta Falcons 34-28.

As the second straight Super Bowl to average over 100 million viewers, Super Bowl LVIII has created a recent trend in America leading to more and more people watching the Super Bowl. Four of the five Super Bowls before that had fallen short of the 100 million mark.

For the first time in history, we’ve had over one-third of the country watch the Super Bowl.

Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Kadarius Toney said that his viral profanity-filled Instagram live comments were not directed at the Chiefs, but rather at the fans of his former team, the New York Giants.

The initial video of Toney’s rant was released on the day of the AFC championship game, where it was widely interpreted that Toney was claiming he didn’t have the hip and ankle injuries that he was listed for on the Chiefs’ weekly injury report. These were the same injuries that kept him off of the roster for the AFC championship game.

“I’m not hurt. None of that,” Toney said.

During Super Bowl media questioning, Toney clarified that his rant wasn’t directed toward the Chiefs. He claimed that the video was “chopped up” or edited when it was released and didn’t accurately depict his statements on the matter.

“I never attacked the Chiefs, never said anything about the Chiefs. Who I was referring to was the Giants fans and the people in my comments, my comment box, not even on my live recording, so you wouldn’t even know they were there,” he said. “But I was referring to them, which I shouldn’t have. I just wanted to go out there. I just wanted to get my message across as far as my injury, but I shouldn’t have did that at the end of the day. I’m a man and I can accept my mistakes just like I accept my wins. I’m just moving past that right now. We’re trying to go out and trying to win [the Super Bowl].”

Toney has made plenty of derogatory insults at his former team since being traded to the Chiefs last season. Toney’s comments on his injury raised questions about whether head coach Andy Reid was filing invalid injury reports, to which he replied that Toney’s injuries “were not made up by any means.”

Toney hadn’t played in an NFL game since Week 15 against the Patriots and did not play in Super Bowl LVIII.