The 1968 Packers couldn’t do it, but that made sense: They were already older than Old Faithful, and they’d bid farewell to Vince Lombardi. The ’74 Dolphins couldn’t do it because Kenny Stabler found Clarence Davis through a sea of Miami hands to end Don Shula’s quest, just before the WFL gutted the heart of his team.
The ’76 Steelers couldn’t get there, despite allowing a total of 28 points in the nine-game winning streak that ended their season, and by 1979, when they tried again, they’d simply fallen prey to Father Time.
The 1990 49ers should have done it, but Leonard Marshall nearly sent Joe Montana to Kingdom Come, and Lawrence Taylor forced a fumble, and Matt Bahr kicked five field goals to deliver the Giants. The ’94 Cowboys lost Jimmy Johnson, the ’99 Broncos John Elway, and the ’05 Patriots, somehow, lost to Jake Plummer in Denver.
Three-peats are a bear. Stuff happens. Players leave. Coaches leave. The target on a team’s back that already felt as big as Niagara Falls when going for a repeat suddenly triples, even quadruples in size when we’re talking about three-peats. Three-peats are hard in any sport; in the NFL, it’s almost a mathematical impossibility and a physical impossibility rolled into one.
And yet here the Kansas City Chiefs are.
Here they were Thursday night, beginning a mission that has never been accomplished, not by any of the greatest teams in the sport over the last 57 years, since the advent of the Super Bowl. And what a way to start, winning 27-20, holding off Lamar Jackson and the ferocious Ravens by a smaller piece of toe than that ill-fated Kevin Durant 3 a few years ago in Brooklyn.
“Nerve-wracking,” quarterback Patrick Mahomes said. “What a way to start a season.”
Here’s the thing about the Chiefs, too:
What sets them apart from the first eight teams to try this trick is they’re at least as good right now as they were last Feb. 11, when they walked off the Allegiant Stadium field 25-22 winners in Super Bowl LVIII. In truth, they may be even better, especially with electric rookie Xavier Worthy, who scored two TDs, one on his first touch as a pro.
“I’m going to frame them,” he said of his two TD game balls.
What’s not in dispute is that they still have Steve Spagnuolo, who has won four Super Bowls and will guide a still-ferocious unit this year in pursuit of a fifth. They still have Andy Reid, who enters the season with 258 victories, the fourth-most of any coach who ever worked in the NFL. And, of course, they have Mahomes.
Mahomes won’t even turn 29 until Sept. 17, and yet he already has three Super Bowls on his dossier, he still has two MVPs, and he is far and away the league’s best drawing card. And if he might be past the point where he posts some of the cartoonish numbers of his early years, there’s still nobody a team fears more when it’s guarding a lead late in a game than Mahomes. Not Josh Allen. Not Lamar Jackson. Not Joe Burrow. Not Jalen Hurts.
“Patrick gives us a chance to win every game we play,” Reid said earlier in the summer. “And that’s regardless of it’s a game in mid-September or the last game of the season, which we always hope will be the Super Bowl. We’re not a one-man team. But he’s our guiding force.”
The Chiefs aren’t afraid to talk about their high ambitions. They started talking three-peat about a minute and a half after Mahomes’ 3-yard toss to Mecole Hardman with three seconds left in the first overtime in the Super Bowl. They understand what’s within their grasp. And there’s more.
They really could do this.
So many of the others had obvious reasons why their pursuits failed. Of all of them, it was the ’90 49ers who probably ought to feel the most regret. They started 10-0 and only lost twice by a total of 14 points. But the Giants had come close to beating them in a rock fight during the season before, losing 7-3 on a Monday night in early December, then finished the job with one of the great rock fights of all time in the NFC title game.
The Chiefs looked vulnerable most of last season, then went on the road and beat the Bills in Buffalo and the Ravens in Baltimore, augmenting their aura even more. So they won’t be as obsessed with seeding and home field as every other team will be. They’ve shown they can go the easy way by hosting the Arrowhead January Invitational or the hard way by getting on airplanes. Now they just have to prove they can do it again, either way.
And do something no team in the Super Bowl Era has ever done. At 1-0, they’re off on the right foot — or make that a toe.