What another Super Bowl means for the Kansas City Chiefs' legacy
Simply put, the Chiefs can chisel their name in stone in the list of all-time great teams with a win in Super Bowl LVIII.
The Kansas City Chiefs are going back to the Super Bowl after a 17-10 win over the Baltimore Ravens in the AFC Championship Game on Sunday. It will be the Chiefs' second consecutive Super Bowl appearance and their fourth in the past five seasons. When you mix in six consecutive AFC Championship Game appearances, you have a run of excellence that has rarely been seen in the NFL.
While the Chiefs and their fans should absolutely take a moment to appreciate making another Super Bowl appearance, it's impossible not to start to think about what another Super Bowl victory would mean for this team, its head coach, and some of its players. If the Chiefs can find a way to beat the San Francisco 49ers it will put them at a level of greatness that only the absolute best in NFL history can match.
Before the game is even played, however, the Chiefs are in elite company in making four Super Bowls in a five-year span. Only the New England Patriots from 2014-2018 and the Buffalo Bills from 1990-1993 have done that before. The Patriots won three of those four and the Bills lost an unfathomable four Super Bowls in a row. If the Chiefs win this game they will be tied with the Patriots for the most dominant five-year run in NFL history.
That would put to bed any debate about whether or not this team is a true NFL dynasty. Frankly, I think they already are with six straight conference title game appearances, four Super Bowl appearances, and at least two Lombardi Trophies. That is already one of the best stretches in NFL history. A third Super Bowl win cements that fact.
Before the season started, I wrote about what another Super Bowl win this season would mean for the legacy of this team, Andy Reid, and Patrick Mahomes. That all still holds if you want to go back and read that, but let's summarize what a third Super Bowl win for this Chiefs team would mean and how they would stack up to other all-time great teams.
The only other teams to ever accomplish the feat are the 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers, the 1990s Dallas Cowboys, the San Francisco 49ers with Joe Montana, and the New England Patriots with Tom Brady and Bill Belichick. Those are the only other teams in NFL history to win three or more Super Bowls in one era.
A win for the Chiefs would also mark just ninth time in NFL history that a team has won back to back Super Bowls and only the second time that it's happened since the 1990s. Simply put, the Chiefs can chisel their name in stone in the list of all time great teams with a win in Super Bowl LVIII.
While the team accomplishment is the most important, their are also a couple of individuals that can cement their names in the pantheon of all-time NFL greats with another Super Bowl win. So next let's take a quick look at what another Super Bowl win would mean for Chiefs coach Andy Reid.