Dallas mayor advocates for Chiefs to relocate to Dallas

While such a move would still qualify as a major surprise and would take a long time to come to fruition — the club’s lease with the Truman Sports Complex runs through January 2031 — sharks are smelling blood in the water. As Lukas Weese of The Athletic writes, Dallas mayor Eric Johnson is openly advocating for the Chiefs to move to Dallas.

In the wake of the voters’ decision on the sales-tax extension, Johnson said on X, “welcome home Dallas Texans” (prior to moving to Kansas City and rebranding as the Chiefs after the 1962 season, the club began play as the Dallas Texans, a charter member of the AFL). While that was something of a tongue-in-cheek comment, Johnson is serious about the possibility of bringing the franchise back to Texas.

“The connections are so deep, the history is so rich,” Johnson said. “We actually could put together the deals that would make sense for them to get them here.”

Johnson’s enthusiasm aside, even if the Chiefs were to undertake a relocation effort, there are any number of hurdles that could thwart a move to Dallas. One such hurdle, of course, is the fact there is already a team in that city, and it is the most valuable team in the league, under the stewardship of perhaps the NFL’s most influential owner.

Despite having failed to advance to the Super Bowl since the end of the 1995 campaign, Jerry Jones‘ Cowboys remain hugely popular and were recently valued at $9 billion.

Johnson doesn't sound concerned regarding an objection from Jones or about the viability of two NFL franchises in Dallas. 

“When the NFL looks at the next round of expansion, they will not find an American city where there is not an NFL franchise currently that will be a more lucrative or faster-growing market to put a team,” he said.

Weese, citing census reports, says that the population of Dallas-Fort Worth has increased by approximately 23% since 2010, and current estimates suggest that it could be the third-largest metro area in the country — behind only Los Angeles and New York, both of which have two NFL clubs — by the 2030s.

Johnson, who took office in 2019, has been seeking another major sports franchise for Dallas for some time, and two years ago he put together an ad hoc committee as part of that endeavor. As far as where a hypothetical second NFL team would play, he has floated Hensley Field, a 738-acre city-owned site that was once the Dallas Naval Air Station, as a possible home. The site is on the water and offers the chance for an increasingly popular mixed-use development that could represent “an economically vibrant district of the city that brings new opportunities to its residents and workers.”

The Chiefs, fresh off their third Super Bowl title in five years, are a bonafide dynasty that still has many more years of Patrick Mahomes to enjoy. It is far too soon for their local fans to panic, but if Hunt, Donovan & Co. seek to move, they will find that one of the country’s biggest cities has its arms wide open.