The Chiefs begin their shot at history
Don't lose sight of what a monumental, historic task Mahomes and company are embarking on in the 2024 season.
It’s a great time to be a Chiefs fan.
Normally on this site, we spend our time and energy going beyond the box score to talk Chiefs film and football in general. Today, I want to talk about the Chiefs, football, and life in general in a broader sense.
Tonight, at 7:20 PM Arrowhead time, the Kansas City Chiefs will begin their quest to be the first team in NFL history to win three consecutive Super Bowls. They won’t succeed or fail in that quest today. They could win by 30 and there will be a lot of work to do. They could lose by 40 and (you guessed it) there will be a lot of work to do. Winning it all is hard, even though the Chiefs have made it look (somewhat) routine over the last half-dozen years.
I want to just pause, take a breath, and remind all of you (and myself) what a monumental, historic feat we’re about to watch Patrick Mahomes and company attempt. No one has ever gone back-to-back-to-back in the Super Bowl era. No one.
The last time a professional football team won three consecutive championships, it was the Green Bay Packers in the 1965-1967 seasons, and one of those championships (the first one) was not a Super Bowl, as the NFL and AFL had not yet merged. If you need an idea as to how different the league was then, there were 14 teams in the NFL in 1965 (with 8 more in the AFL) and 16 in 1967 (with another 9 in the AFL). The salary cap wouldn’t become part of the league for another three decades. And again, the Super Bowl literally hadn’t been invented yet in that first “NFL Championship” that kicked off Green Bay’s three titles in a row.
A long road to a short thought? This is a chance at doing something that literally no one in the history of the game has accomplished. A chance to be able to say, definitively, “greatest team of all time” and leave no room for argument. And it’s worth stopping and thinking about that for a moment at all the legacies that the Chiefs are looking to enhance. It’s also worth stopping and reminding Chiefs fans (myself included) to sit back and enjoy the ride as they make the attempt. But let’s talk legacies first.
Andy Reid
Andy Reid is one of the winningest NFL head coaches to ever live, trailing only Belichick, Halas, and Shula (and of course with Halas you’ve got to account for the fact that his coaching tenure began in the 20’s and ended in the 60’s). He’s currently tied with multiple other head coaches at 5th all time with three titles. He’s widely considered one of the greatest offensive minds to ever live, designing top-tier offenses from the late 90’s to the present and adapting with the ebbs and flows of the game.
A lot of great offensive play callers come and go in the league, and the NFL almost always catches up with them. But Reid has endured year after year, morphing his offense to his personnel and to an ever-changing football landscape while continuing to be on the cutting edge of change on the offensive side of the ball. His greatest trait? Finding tendencies and holes in opponents’ gameplan and just HAMMERING them. Need a recent example? Look no further than the last game the Chiefs played, with the opposing defense sticking with man/match on 3rd and long repeatedly and Reid punishing them with mesh looks and other pick designs.
Reid is (very likely) already on the Mt. Rushmore of head coaches in the NFL. But he has an opportunity to put his stamp on the greatest three-year run in NFL history and become a coach of the greatest dynasty to ever walk the earth. With that, the argument stops being about whether he’s one of the best four coaches to ever do it, but whether he might be the best there ever was.
Steve Spagnuolo
In Spags we trust.