History is against the Kansas City Chiefs building a dynasty
The Pittsburgh Steelers and Ben Roethlisberger
Ben Roethlisberger has now been with the Pittsburgh Steelers for 16 seasons. The Steelers won the Super Bowl twice in his first five seasons with the team (2005 and 2008) and then made it to one more in his 7th season (2010). That’s three Super Bowl appearances and two wins in his first seven seasons in the league. That’s as close as any other team has come to a dynasty of their own during the “Patriots Era”.
However, the Steelers have failed to get back to the big game again over the past nine seasons. They did make the playoffs in five of those nine seasons but only made it out of the divisional round once when they lost in the AFC Championship Game in 2016. Roethlisberger will turn 38 before this next season starts and is rehabbing from an elbow injury that kept him sidelined last season. So at this point it looks like a long shot that the Steelers will add to their legacy of the Big Ben era.
So what happened to the Steelers? Well, their championship teams were actually led by their dominant defense. Roethlisberger was more of a game manager in their first Super Bowl win and then was more of a driving force in their second win. While Big Ben and the Steelers offense continued to be a force for several years the defense took a bit of dip between 2013-2016. Then when the defense started to come back around in recent years, the offense started to drop off thanks to the drama that surrounded Antonio Brown and Le’Veon Bell—which eventually led to them leaving the team. That combined with Big Ben’s injury this past season has left the Steelers well short of their Super Bowl teams of a decade ago.
The good news for Chiefs fans is that while K.C.’s defense was a big part of their Super Bowl win, Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs offense doesn’t require the defense to be one of the absolute elite in all the NFL in order to win. However, I do think that the drama in the Pittsburgh locker room is a good warning to heed. If the Chiefs want to continue to be a contender it is important to continue to have a great locker room. Andy Reid is a big part of that, but the players that Brett Veach puts in that locker room are just as important. The temptation of adding big talent can sometimes cause teams to hurt the team chemistry. The Chiefs have avoided that so far and it will be vital that they continue to do so moving forward.
Next up let’s look at another team that made it to back to back Super Bowls recently.