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Super Bowl LVIII Champions
Kansas City Chiefs
A couple of years ago, after the Rams beat the Bengals to win Super Bowl LVI, I saw some of the members of that team talking boldly about repeating.
Immediately, I began to dismiss the Rams and those bold predictions.
Why?
Because the Rams were...well, frankly, they were not all that great. At least not by Super Bowl championship standards, in any case. Yes, the won the Super Bowl, and that is to their credit. I am not trying to minimize what they accomplished.
However, it should be remembered that they barely escaped not losing at several points along the way. They nearly blew a huge lead to the defending champion Tampa Bay Bucs, but escaped with a win. Then, they somehow got past the 49ers, a team that had owned them prior to that. Again, though, they basically just barely scraped by. Finally, they did beat the Bengals in the Super Bowl but, once again, they barely hung on.
So yes, the Rams won the big game. They were champions. And immediately after that achievement, they seemed to almost promise their fans another title the following season. Instead of simply enjoying the moment, savoring what was, frankly, an unexpected title, they wasted no time in putting the pressure squarely on their own shoulders again.
The result? They had literally the worst title defense in the Super Bowl era. Seriously, their 5-12 mark in the title defense season ranks as the worst of any defending Super Bowl champion. Worse than the 1988 Washington Redskins and 2003 Tampa Bay Buccaneers, both of whom finished 7-9. Worse than the 1987 New York Giants, who ended with a 6-9 record in a strike shorted season, although it should be noted that three of those losses by the Giants were with replacement players. The Rams title defense in 2022 was even worse than the 1999 Denver Broncos, who defended their Super Bowl title with a 6-10 record, which became the standard bearer for worst Super Bowl title defense ever, at least until the Rams with that horrible 5-12 season.
The thing is, it's really difficult to repeat. There have been teams which I swore seemed so good when they won the Super Bowl, that another title - of not a dynasty - seemed almost inevitable. I am thinking of the 1985 Chicago Bears, or the 1996 Green bay Packers. Maybe the 1999 St. Louis Rams, or the 2013 Seattle Seahawks. Some of them came close, but none of them actually did win another Super Bowl championship. And there were teams who looked so good at times, that a Super Bowl title seemed inevitable. I thought that of the 1990 Buffalo Bills, the 1999 Minnesota Vikings, the 2007 New England Patriots. Maybe some of those Colts teams with Peyton Manning before they actually won it in 2006.
What's the point of my mentioning this? Simply that it is really, really difficult to win a title, let alone to repeat.
That was why I was not exactly bowled over by the Rams predicting another Super Bowl title the following season. Because few teams that win championships gloss over what they just did - and all of he obstacles that they had to overcome to win it all - and then make the bold prediction that they will do it again. True, Michael Jordan seemed to make a habit of it, but for now, let's just stick with NFL football, okay?
Of the few teams whom I can remember basically predicting more Super Bowl championships to come after winning one, there are three that come to mind. First of all, the San Francisco 49ers, particularly after winning back-to-back Super Bowls and becoming the "Team of the Decade" in the eighties. There were the Packers after winning it all in 1996, who basically proclaimed themselves the new dynasty of the day. And now, this year's Kansas City Chiefs.
Now, I will mention that when you look at the caliber of those teams, they were all really very good. The 1989 49ers were probably the second most dominant Super Bowl champion I personally ever saw, right behind the 1985 Chicago Bears. The 1996 Green Bay Packers were not the NFL's next dynasty, but they were really good as well, dominating the 1996 season and storming through the 1997 season, reaching the Super Bowl as heavy favorites, only to get upset by the Denver Broncos in the big game. And this Kansas City Chiefs team, which became the first team to win back-to-back Super Bowls in 19 years.
So ii already mentioned how the Packers came close to repeating, but fell just short. However, the San Francisco 49ers did win back-to-back Super Bowl titles. They scraped by the Bengals in Super Bowl XXIII, and then played it much safer the next year, humiliating the Denver Broncos, 55-10, in what still stands as the most lopsided Super Bowl in history. Before that game was over - before the 49ers officially began their championship celebration - a number of players on their sideline began to hold up three fingers, indicating that they were going to "three-peat."
Incidentally, that was when I began to grow really sick and tired of the 49ers. Yes, even though I had actually been pulling for the 49ers in that Super Bowl, the combination of just how merciless they were in embarrassing the Broncos by running up the score, combined with predicting a third straight Super Bowl win before the second one was even in the books, made me sick and tired of them. Suddenly, it seemed to me that anybody else winning the Super Bowl would be preferable. That was when I began to actively root not only for the Giants and Jets on a weekly basis, but also for whoever was playing the 49ers that week.
Yet the thing was, San Francisco really good. In fact, I still maintain that the 49ers from about 1987 - 1990 were probably the best team over a course of four seasons. They went 13-2 in the strike shorted 1987 season, enjoying the best overall record in the league, and had both the number one ranked offense and the number one defense. They were favored to win the Super Bowl, but got upset by the Vikings. In 1988, they won the Super Bowl. Bingo in 1989. Now, they were boldly - or perhaps I should suggest arrogantly - predicting that they would win yet another Super Bowl the following season, in 1990. Everyone grew quite familiar with the term "three-peat," which was associated specifically with the 49ers during the early 1990's. They made no secret that winning that third straight title was their goal that season.
And they very nearly did. Of all the teams that repeated as Super owl champions, the 1990 49ers came closest to winning a third in a row. they raced out to a 10-0 start, and finished with a league best 14-2 record overall. They beat Washington soundly in the divisional round, and then battled the Giants in a tight game in the NFC Championship Game that felt like a chess match. The Giants won, but just barely, securing the win on the final play of the game with a successful field goal attempt.
Since then, other teams have repeated, but none came as close as the 49ers did in 1990. True, the Dallas Cowboys also got to the NFC Championship Game the season after winning back-to-back Super Bowls. But the 49ers beat them convincingly. The next team to repeat was the Denver Broncos, and I already mentioned how their title defense in 1999 ranked among the very worst in history, through a combination of bad luck, poor play, and the enormous pressure that was on them from all of the success that they had enjoyed. After that, the New England Patriots won consecutive Super Bowls in 2003 and 2004. But in 2005, they finished 10-6. Good enough for the AFC East title, and they did make it to the divisional round, where they fell short to Denver.
In short, it's really, really tough to win three consecutive Super Bowls. After all, it is difficult for a team to win a single Super Bowl, but someone does at the end of each year. It is far more rare for teams to win consecutive titles, as the Chiefs doing it this past Sunday was only the ninth time it happened in the Super Bowl era. But nobody has won three consecutive Super Bowls. Not the Steel Curtain dynasty in Pittsburgh in the seventies. Not the San Francisco 49ers of the Montana and Rice era in the eighties. Not the Cowboys in the nineties. And not the Patriots in the Belicheck and Brady era in the 2000's. Those are some of the most legendary, most successful and dominating teams in NFL history. Yet not one of them managed to win three straight Super Bowls.
So if the Chiefs manage to do it - a very big "if" regardless of how confident the members of Kansas City sounded when they predicted it - then they will certainly have earned their place as among the very best teams in NFL history. Even among championship teams, that would elevate this era's Kansas City Chiefs team to the crème de la crème of NFL teams throughout history.
Yet, if somebody put a gun to my head and demanded whether I think they will actually do it or not, my answer would simply be no. One of the things that annoyed me about the 1990 49ers was that suddenly, it seemed that everybody assumed that one team - San Francisco - was better than all of the other then 27 franchises in the league, and so would likely win the Super Bowl. Now, there are 31 other franchises in the league. And it would be asking a lot to assume that Kansas City will simply roll right back to yet another Super Bowl, and then win it, too. So much can happen to derail their title quest, from injuries to aging (particularly their older veterans) to distractions to the enormous pressure that will fall squarely on their shoulders, to other teams finally figuring some kind of weakness with the team. After all, KC hardly dominated this season. They finished 11-6, and waited far longer than usual to win the AFC West. They went on the road, and survived tough battles in Buffalo and in Baltimore, and then just got past the 49ers after a very tough game that went deep into overtime. There are a lot of other good teams in the league, and I just don't believe that the Kansas City Chiefs, despite how incredibly impressive their accomplishments have been in recent years, are now just so good that they are almost a sure thing for yet another tile next year.
But we shall see.
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