As difficult as this year was for the Kansas City Chiefs and their fan base, there’s plenty of recent history to suggest that the Chiefs could still return to prominence. Steven Louis Goldstein of The Athletic did a breakdown of Super Bowl winners, and the fact that the Chiefs occupy one of his higher tiers seems promising for the future given that quarterback Patrick Mahomes, coach Andy Reid and GM Brett Veach are still in place.
Goldstein placed the Chiefs in Tier III, which he called “Four in hand” to represent the fact that the Chiefs have won four Super Bowls. Three of those wins are recent, having occurred in 2019, 2022 and 2023, with the fourth happening back in 1969 when the old AFL was just merging with the NFL.
The teams above the Chiefs include the San Francisco 49ers and the Dallas Cowboys, with both teams in Tier II with eight appearances and five wins each, which put them just one win below the two leaders. The top tier consisted of the New England Patriots and the Pittsburgh Steelers, with these two teams representing the gold standard for this sort of thing with six wins each.
Kansas City’s three Super Bowl losses happened in 1966, 2020 and 2024. The 1966 loss is fairly easy to write off given that the Chiefs were an AFL team that was totally outclassed by the Green Bay Packers given the sharp difference between the two leagues back then.
The two more recent losses are a sharp reminder of how short the window for this sort of thing can be. Mahomes is 30 now and Reid is 68, so this isn’t going to last forever, and given the combination of their respective ages you can make the argument that it might be approaching the end of the run.
The Chiefs are betting a lot that they’re not far away from another Super Bowl. Most of the current rumors have Kansas City addressing individual flaws rather than a complete overhaul, but if that turns out to be the case, the Chiefs may be starting over with Mahomes with a young coach who has different ideas.
The fan base wouldn’t necessarily mind that given some of the issues that surfaced this year, but this is one of those “be careful what you wish for” situations. The Chiefs will be drafting in the top ten for the first time in forever, and it will be interesting to see what Veach and Reid do, position-wise, to get Kansas City back to the Super Bowl.