NEW ORLEANS — The Kansas City Chiefs are chasing history in their pursuit of a third straight championship when they face the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LIX on Sunday, but they are neither fixated on the challenge nor intimidated by it.
After defeating the Eagles 38-35 in Super Bowl LVII and the San Francisco 49ers 25-22 in Super Bowl LVIII, the Chiefs could become the first team to win three straight Super Bowls.
At Super Bowl Opening Night on Monday, no player or coach shied away from the moment, while also sticking to the company line about focusing on the matter at hand.
“I don’t think I understand truly the weight that this has, what this moment means,” Kansas City cornerback Trent McDuffie said. “I’m trying to live in the moment, take each day as I can, and making sure I’m thankful for having this opportunity.”
How rare is that opportunity? No major U.S./Canada professional sports franchise (NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, WNBA, MLS) has managed three straight league championships in two decades. The last team to achieve it was the Los Angeles Lakers juggernaut spearheaded by Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant and coached by Phil Jackson, which won three straight from 2000-02.
Before that, the New York Yankees won three in a row from 1998-2000 as the Houston Comets were also winning four in a row (1997-2000) in the WNBA.
Jackson coached Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls to a pair of three-peats (1991-93, 1996-98) earlier in the 1990s. The most recent NHL three-peaters were the New York Islanders, who won four in a row from 1980-83.
If you’re counting along, that’s just six teams to do it since 1980, a span of 45 years.
“We’ve got a lot of guys who have been doing this a long time,” Chiefs linebacker Nick Bolton said. “We know we’ve got the opportunity. If you get to this point of the year … just put your faith where it belongs and put your best foot forward.”
The Chiefs are already further along in that pursuit than any NFL team has been in the Super Bowl era. No other back-to-back Super Bowl winner has advanced to a third straight Super Bowl since the inception of the game in 1966.
The Green Bay Packers were technically the NFL’s first three winners of straight, from 1929-31 (predating a championship game of any sort), and they repeated the feat from 1965-67, with the first of those championships coming before the advent of the Super Bowl (with no AFL representation). Those legendary Packers, helmed by Vince Lombardi, won the first two Super Bowls against AFL foes to cement the NFL’s second-ever three-peat.
The Canton Bulldogs won two straight championships from 1922-23, but the organization had merged with another franchise to become the Cleveland Bulldogs when it won a third in 1924.
Even in the pre-Super Bowl era, only two other teams made it to the same position as these Chiefs: the Chicago Bears and the Detroit Lions. The Bears won NFL championships in 1940-41 before getting knocked off by Washington in 1942. The Lions earned titles in 1952-53 before losing in the championship game to the Cleveland Browns in ’54.
The Chiefs may soon be mentioned alongside Lombardi’s Packers, but they know it would take a collective effort, just as it has to get to this point.
“It’s been everybody,” quarterback Patrick Mahomes said. “Blocking field goals, defensive guys getting big stops, scoring touchdowns: That’s what makes a football team special, when everybody has an impact on the final result of the game.”
