How this Super Bowl run is different for the Kansas City Chiefs
By Greg Morse
What makes this Super Bowl run different from the other two in recent years?
Two Super Bowls in 50 years. Three Super Bowls in five years. When times change, they change fast. After languishing away in football purgatory for half a century, Kansas City Chiefs fans are enjoying the golden age of Chiefs football.
As I’m sure any player who has been to multiple Super Bowls can attest to, each one is different though. During Monday’s ‘Super Bowl Opening Night’ Travis Kelce was asked, “Does this one feel different?”, he answered with a resounding “yes!”
Kelce is one of the few players still on the team to experience that first Super Bowl win—as well as the loss the very next year. In fact, that was the one he referenced in that same interview saying, “The last Super Bowl left a bad taste in my mouth.”
Every Super Bowl is different. Some end in celebration, others in heartbreak. So how is Super Bowl LVII different from Super Bowls LIV and LV?
The Chiefs aren’t unknowns anymore
When the Chiefs won the Super Bowl in 2020, they had been to back-to-back AFC Championship games, and their relatively new quarterback was starting to make a name for himself. But overall, they hadn’t quite established themselves yet. Even the first playoff game that year against the Texans indicated that maybe the Chiefs weren’t for real, yet.
Ten quarters after that fateful divisional round game started, the Chiefs had ‘planted their flag on football’s highest mountain.’ And people were starting to take notice.
Three years, three more AFC Championships, and a second Super Bowl appearance later, everyone knows the Chiefs are legit. Like the Patriots before them, they get everyone’s best shot every week. They aren’t unknown anymore. They are known and feared, and that also means the expectations are higher than ever.