The Kansas City Chiefs are back in the Super Bowl for the third time in four seasons, cementing their spot as the preeminent NFL franchise. It wasn't long ago that the Chiefs had one of the longest championship droughts in all of football.
Have the Chiefs won a Super Bowl? Kansas City's championship history includes two Super Bowl victories and four appearances in the big game, prior to this year's matchup with the Philadelphia Eagles.
In Major League Baseball, the Kansas City Royals won titles in 1985 and 2015. Kansas City doesn't have an NHL or NBA team which may contribute to the Chiefs' enthusiastic fan base.
The Chiefs went 50 years in between championships before ending their title-less streak in February 2020. Patrick Mahomes won the Super Bowl MVP award, leading Kansas City past San Francisco 31-20 in Super Bowl LIV. Five decades earlier, Len Dawson was named the MVP of Super Bowl IV in the Chiefs' 23-7 victory over the Minnesota Vikings to conclude the 1969 season.
Late in Super Bowl LIV, it looked like the Chiefs would go yet another year without winning a championship. San Francisco had a 20-10 lead from late in the third quarter to beyond the midway point of the fourth quarter. Mahomes saved Kansas City's season by completing a game-altering 44-yard pass to Tyreek Hill on third down and 15, a few plays before his touchdown pass to Travis Kelce made the score 20-17. A few minutes later, Mahomes connected with Damien Williams at the 2:44 mark to give the Chiefs the lead for good.
One year later, the Chiefs seemed poised to become the first back-to-back Super Bowl champions in 16 years. Tom Brady, the last quarterback to accomplish the feat, had other plans, leading the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in a 31-9 rout of Kansas City in Super Bowl LV. Brady threw three touchdown passes and won a record fifth Super Bowl MVP award.
Mahomes had the worst playoff game of his career, throwing two interceptions and posting a 52.3 passer rating. The story of the game was the Buccaneers' pass rush against a beat-up Kansas City offensive line. Mahomes was under pressure all game in the one-sided defeat.
From the 1970 season through the 2018 campaign, the Chiefs didn't make a single Super Bowl appearance. Kansas City played in two of the first four Super Bowls and had a key role in establishing the AFL's credibility after the merger with the NFL.
The Chiefs represented the AFL in the first-ever Super Bowl, but they didn't present much of a threat to Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers. The Packers beat the Chiefs 35-10 for the first-ever Super Bowl championship.
Three years later, the Chiefs held the Vikings to 28 fewer points in their Super Bowl IV victory. It was the last Super Bowl before the AFL and NFL would officially merge into one league. Kansas City entered the game as a 12-point underdogs against Minnesota. The Chiefs proved that the New York Jets' shocking Super Bowl III victory was no fluke, and that the AFL could compete with the top NFL teams.
Before the Super Bowl era, the Chiefs had two titles in their brief franchise history. Kansas City won the AFL championship in 1966. The franchise was founded in 1960 as the Dallas Texans, and the team won the AFL championship in 1962 before being relocated as the Kansas City Chiefs for the 1963 season.
The Chiefs have hosted the AFC Championship Game in all five seasons that Mahomes has been the team's starting quarterback. Now that Mahomes and Andy Reid have succeeded Brady and Bill Belichick as the league's top quarterback and head coaching duo, the Chiefs could add more Super Bowl championships before too long.
