As the Kansas City Chiefs solidified themselves as the NFL’s newest dynasty, they’ve left a wake of destruction across a league that has struggled to keep pace. Three Super Bowl victories have helped quarterback Patrick Mahomes and head coach Andy Reid secure their legacies among the all-time greats.
But their reign has come at a cost. Not to them, of course, but to their rivals. Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills, Lamar Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens, Jalen Hurts and the Philadelphia Eagles and Kyle Shanahan and the San Francisco 49ers all have Super Bowl-sized holes on their resumes. And those are just the ones who have come the closest.
Consider the carnage around the NFL since Mahomes and Reid began their reign of terror in 2018. Fifty head coaches (not including interims) have lost their jobs while 24 general managers have either been fired or forced to cede power. In the AFC West alone, the Denver Broncos, Los Angeles Chargers and Las Vegas Raiders have fired seven head coaches (plus one resignation) and dumped six executives since 2018.
The Chiefs are a modern-day version of Tom Brady and Bill Belichick’s New England Patriots or Michael Jordan and Phil Jackson’s Chicago Bulls, teams that reached extraordinary levels of greatness while changing the way their rivals were remembered. As rivals chase the Chiefs, they’ve made bold roster decisions that have failed, hired coaches and general managers only to see them flame out, or simply gotten caught overthinking in-game decisions to beat themselves.
The Chiefs, again the No. 1 seed in the AFC, open their quest this weekend to become the first three-peat Super Bowl champion in NFL history. As they work to enhance their legacy, will they continue to dismantle others’ along the way?
Star-crossed
The Chiefs have ushered Allen out of the playoffs three times, including three of the past four years. Jackson entered the 2024 season with as many MVP awards (two) as he had playoff victories, and he lost his only postseason meeting with the Chiefs. Hurts and Brock Purdy each suffered heartbreaking Super Bowl losses at the hands of a Mahomes game-winning drive.
Mahomes, who is 15-3 in playoff starts, quickly inserted himself into the conversation among the greatest players of all time. Matthew Stafford, Russell Wilson and Aaron Rodgers are the only other active full-time starting quarterbacks with Super Bowl victories, but Mahomes has as many rings as the three of them combined.
The discourse around quarterbacks has always been heavily impacted by their successes or failures in the Super Bowl. It’s the reason Joe Montana was viewed as the gold standard while Dan Marino was a great passer. It’s why, during the first half of Peyton Manning’s career, pundits wondered if he could ever win on the biggest stage. It’s maybe the biggest reason why San Diego Chargers legend Philip Rivers may not make the Hall of Fame and why former league MVP Steve McNair still hasn’t been enshrined.
Mahomes took care of those concerns in the first half of his career. He’s already left his peers in the dust in terms of being considered the best of his generation and has inserted himself into the discussion for the greatest of all time.
Mahomes and the Chiefs have barely given their competition a chance. Joe Burrow is the only quarterback not named Brady who has gotten through Mahomes’ Chiefs in the playoffs, but the Cincinnati Bengals’ QB couldn’t finish the job. Allen and Jackson have heard similar critiques as Manning
It is all about rings for the QBs,” said a Super Bowl-winning executive, who, like the other sources in this story, was granted anonymity so he could speak openly. “To be considered one of the greats, you need at least one (Super Bowl victory) on your resume to be in that elite group. Allen, Lamar and Burrow are outstanding, but without a ring — or two or three — they’ll never approach the level of Brady and Mahomes.”
Purdy seems like a safe candidate to secure a new contract this offseason, but there’s been some debate over whether he’s replaceable in Shanahan’s offense. Would that be a conversation if the 49ers had made a single defensive stop over their last four series in last year’s Super Bowl? Purdy walked off the field in the fourth quarter and overtime with the lead, but Mahomes’ magic has stifled Purdy’s legacy — perhaps even his bank account
And then there’s Shanahan, who is universally viewed among the greatest offensive minds of his generation. If either of his two Super Bowl losses to the Chiefs had swung differently, Shanahan would be a lock for the Hall of Fame, and there would have been no debate over his job security after one lousy season. Reid can relate after some early-career shortcomings as the Philadelphia Eagles head coach, but his recent success has vaulted him into the mix among the greatest to ever command a sideline.
Instead, there’s been a loud curiosity over Shanahan’s ability to close out a game on the greatest stage. He was the Atlanta Falcons’ offensive coordinator when they infamously blew a 28-3 lead to the Patriots in Super Bowl LI, and the two dramatic losses to the Chiefs have furthered that debate.
“Within the coaches in the league, no one thinks any less of Kyle Shanahan,” a former Super Bowl-winning Patriots assistant said. “It’s ludicrous to think they should get rid of him. Reid had these same criticisms early in his career, and now he’s clearly in the conversation for best coach ever. Kyle Shanahan’s criticisms are that he’s lost a couple of Super Bowls? OK, do you know how hard it is to get to the Super Bowl?
“If you throw rocks at Kyle Shanahan and want him fired, he’s going to have a job in 30 seconds. Reid, it was that he couldn’t win the big one, and now he’s on the verge of winning three in a row. Kyle is going to be coaching for a long time. He’s going to have another chapter in his career where he’s going for three (Super Bowls) in a row.”
Shanahan isn’t the only coach whose legacy has suffered at the hands of the Chiefs. Some of the best coaches in the NFL have come up short against Kansas City when it matters most. Shanahan (0-2), Sean McDermott (0-3), Jim Harbaugh (0-1) and Mike Tomlin (0-1) are a combined 0-7 against the Chiefs in the playoffs.
There’s nothing new about how champions are remembered. But given the Chiefs’ postseason dominance, some of the NFL’s greatest characters have yet to graduate from footnotes in the history books.
Shell-shocked
Trevor Lawrence and the Jacksonville Jaguars were once viewed as the next big thing with their red-hot finish to the 2022 season, including a 27-point comeback victory against the Chargers in the playoffs. But the Jags couldn’t get through a gimpy Mahomes in the divisional round and never recovered, collapsing in 2023 and further regressing this season, which led to head coach Doug Pederson’s firing
Burrow and the Bengals didn’t blink during a coldblooded 2021 playoff victory at Arrowhead, leading many to believe he could eventually unseat Mahomes as the league’s premier quarterback. But Mahomes got his revenge in the 2022 postseason and the Bengals haven’t returned to the playoffs. They attempted to get younger and faster on defense to compete with the Chiefs, but the experiment has failed so far. The defensive coordinator who supposedly had Mahomes’ number, Lou Anarumo, has been fired.
The Chiefs haven’t just beaten teams but forced them to rethink their approaches. As the results have shown, it hasn’t worked.
“Your fears dictate your actions,” the former Patriots coach said. “If you can’t swim, you’re not going to get in the pool. But we saw teams in the draft using their best assets on corners and pass rushers just to stop Tom. And maybe that wasn’t always their best way of building the best team, (as opposed to) stacking up offensive and defensive linemen and taking a couple years and methodically building from there.”
The Bills — this generation’s Rivers-era Chargers, who were eliminated from the playoffs three times by Brady’s Patriots — have a chance to adjust that narrative. They moved on from a handful of prominent veterans, including trading receiver Stefon Diggs, because they also recognized the importance of getting younger and faster. They’re the only team to beat the Chiefs in a meaningful game this season and have set themselves up for a possible fourth crack at the Chiefs in the playoffs.
“The Bills haven’t won the Super Bowl, but that doesn’t mean they’re not a good team,” the former Patriots coach said. “It’s just that they haven’t beaten the best team.”
The Patriots used to have a similar effect on their playoff opponents. New England sent many teams into yearslong tailspins.
