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.
What would another Super Bowl win mean for Andy Reid?
Andy Reid is already a Hall of Fame head coach. He currently ranks fourth in all-time regular season wins for a head coach behind only Don Shula, George Halas, and Bill Belichick. He trails only Belichick in career postseason wins. For years, the only thing missing from Reid's resume was Super Bowl wins, but with two wins now already in his pocket, he's already tied with NFL legends like Shula, Tom Landry, and Bill Parcells.
Another Super Bowl win would move Andy Reid into a three-way tie for the third most Super Bowl wins in NFL history with Joe Gibbs and Bill Walsh. Only Chuck Noll (4) and Bill Belichick (6) would have more. So if Reid can win one more Super Bowl, the only other coach in NFL history with his success in both the regular season and postseason would be Bill Belichick. Nobody else comes close to their overall long-term success. He'd have more postseason and Super Bowl titles than Shula and Halas and much more prolonged regular-season success than guys like Noll, Gibbs, and Walsh.
Andy Reid is already a coaching legend, but another Super Bowl would just make his place on the Mount Rushmore of NFL coaches that much more secure. Frankly, with another Super Bowl win the only other head coach with a stronger claim to be the best coach of all time would be Bill Belichick—essentially making Andy Reid the second-best coach in the history of the NFL.
Speaking of the best of all time, we also need to talk about what another Super Bowl would mean for Patrick Lavon Mahomes II.
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What would another Super Bowl win mean for Patrick Mahomes?
I would be up all night and still writing into the following day if I tried to list every accomplishment or record that Patrick Mahomes has piled up in his six years as a starter in the NFL. It all starts with the team success that he has helped Kansas City achieve. Starting your NFL career off with six straight conference title games, four Super Bowl appearances, and at least two wins is simply staggering. If he can up that to three Super Bowl wins it will only accelerate his accent up the list of greatest NFL players of all time.
Before this game is even played Mahomes is already tied for fifth all-time in Super Bowl wins. A win would move him into a tie with Troy Aikman for fourth all-time. Only Tom Brady (7), Joe Montana (4), and Terry Bradshaw (4) would have more. That is an awfully short list considering Mahomes is only 28 years old and is completing his sixth season as a starter.
Here's what is even more mind-boggling. In six seasons Mahomes has already surpassed Bradshaw's career passing yards and passing touchdowns. I know it's a different era, but Bradshaw was a starter for the better part of his 14-year NFL career. Troy Aikman was a starter for all 12 of his NFL seasons and Mahomes has over 50 more touchdown passes and with a good season next year could pass him in yards as well. We've simply never seen a quarterback start his career with this kind of prolific production and postseason success.
A third Super Bowl combined with the prolific passing numbers Mahomes has put up and his two MVP awards would put Patrick Mahomes on a short list with Tom Brady and Joe Montana for the best all-around quarterbacks of all time when you factor in both production and postseason/Super Bowl wins and he'd have put himself there at just 28 years old. It's simply staggering.
It also is worth mentioning again that he and Travis Kelce now have the most postseason touchdowns of any duo in NFL history. Kelce also broke Jerry Rice's record for most career postseason catches on Sunday so he is growing his legacy as not only one of the greatest tight ends of all time but as one of the greatest pass catchers ever.
Chiefs fans need to enjoy this ride. No fan should ever come to expect or take for granted this level of success. Not only have we never seen anything like this in Chiefs' history, but there are only a handful of all-time great teams that have seen something remotely like this in NFL history. The Chiefs are arguably already in the midst of one of the best stretches of success in all of NFL history. Another Super Bowl win will take any argument about this off the table. There will be no questioning the dynasty and the place in history for this team, their coach, and their quarterback.
So in the immortal words of Andy Reid: "How 'bout those... CHIEFS?"