The Chiefs-49ers is a Super Bowl rematch in theory only. Why KC isn’t the same since
Behind two double doors, a total of about 75 lockers will provide an ideal setting for this demonstration.
It’s the Chiefs’ locker room, because what better place to illustrate just how different this team looks as it prepares for a Week 7 trip to San Francisco than the last one that prepared to play the 49ers, in Super Bowl LIV?
The exercise: How many of these guys even played an offensive or defensive snap in that game three seasons ago?
A glance to one direction of the room to pick out the five wide receivers. No. No. Yes. No. No.
A walk toward the residencies of the defensive backs. No. Yes. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.
The quarterbacks? OK, that’s one very emphatic yes.
But the running backs? No. No. No. No.
And, well, sensing a theme here?
The final numbers: Five starters. Not five offensive starters. Not five defensive starters.
Five total starters from that Chiefs Super Bowl victory are still walking through here. And fewer yet, just four players in this room, received a starter’s playing time in that game in terms of snaps.
The list: Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, Frank Clark and Chris Jones.
That’s it.
Sure, it amplifies the nature of the NFL as business-first, but it’s also typically the nature of this business that you see the consequences of such turnover. The 49ers, for example, are 19-20 since that evening in Miami Gardens. The Chiefs are 30-9, with another trip to the Super Bowl and then yet another to the AFC Championship Game to their credit.
That’s the key distinction: change, but followed by stability.
Those two words do not usually go together. They’re basically opposites.
But both, not just one, have come to define the makeup of this room. And for a little perspective on that union, after the roll call, I approached offensive lineman Austin Reiter. He’s on the Chiefs’ practice squad, so he’s not one of the five starters on the active roster, but he played in that Super Bowl — and he has a bit of a different viewpoint than the five who were actually on the 53-man.
Reiter left.
And then he came back.
He spent most of the 2021 season with the Dolphins and part of it with the Saints before re-joining the Chiefs (on their practice squad) this year.
So, what does he make of it?
“I think it speaks to the leaders of this team, and I think it speaks to the coaching staff — because I’ve been in some other places in the last year, and it’s very clear here that everybody’s on the same page,” Reiter said.
Which shows up when and how?
“It’s just a well-oiled machine,” he said. “The expectation is set, and the players in the locker room uphold that expectation, and everybody here is completely bought in.
“I know a lot of teams aren’t that way in their locker rooms. When things aren’t going (well) in some way, you can fall into a trap of some guys saying, ‘Ah, it’s not my (fault).’ It’s not like that here.”
Sometimes the simple answer is the best answer — when you have the quarterback and head coach figured out, the rest is a bit easier to squeeze into place.
Except that, man, a lot of teams in the past have assumed they had that duo figured out, only to look back years later and still have one trophy all by its lonesome in the case.
Sean Payton and Drew Brees, a former league record-holder for passing yards, produced one title in New Orleans. Peyton Manning and Tony Dungy got one in Indianapolis, and none of Dungy’s successors even made it that far. Aaron Rodgers and Mike McCarthy carried their relationship past its expiration date, which I feel most comfortable saying because they only got one in Green Bay.
The list goes on.
Success of the highest kind in the NFL is fleeting, even for the very best. It can evaporate quickly, which is why you see teams like the Bills try to do all they can to take full advantage of the opportunity once they have it.
The Chiefs, on the other hand, are betting that they can be less like this trend and more like the anomaly in New England, a wager that hinges on their head coach-quarterback complement being unique. And it is.
But with example after example, it’s clear that complement guarantees them precisely nothing — a lesson Mahomes didn’t really learn until after the Super Bowl.
But not the Super Bowl we’re talking about.
The one the Chiefs lost a year later.
Winning the Super Bowl “and winning the MVP early in my career, I think I just kind of thought this is what you did — you went out there and played football for Coach Reid and you win the MVP and you win Super Bowls,” Mahomes admitted. “But now I see the grind and being in there every single day and not succeeding and not winning the Super Bowl.
“I think if I had the chance to go out there and win another one, I think I’ll appreciate it even more.”
When we analyze, assess, credit and at times criticize the quarterback and head coach, the layer we rarely peel back is the environment in which they’ve produced their results.
They’ve long provided this sense of optimism — this sense that the Chiefs will always be competitive — when all the while they’ve been surrounded by significant change.
The trip to San Francisco on Sunday is a well-timed reminder of how the Chiefs are trying to navigate the aftermath, and that it doesn’t work for the overwhelming majority — that you typically can’t have both change and stability.
The 49ers haven’t followed that Super Bowl appearance with much of either. I mentioned their record, but that’s with less significant roster turnover. The 49ers have 11 starters from that Super Bowl (five offense, six defense) still on their roster today. That’s more than double the Chiefs’ representation.
The Chiefs are attempting a more difficult balancing act — with their present-day ambitions on one side of the line, their future goals on the other. We’ve not seen many — one? — successfully occupy them both. Really, only Tom Brady and Bill Belichick have cashed in on this strategy in the past two-plus decades. It’s that rare.
One year you’re talking “Run it Back,” and two years later, 79.3% of that roster has run elsewhere or been run out of town.
The Chiefs have extended their runway with the collection of future assets like draft picks, yet are still operating with plenty more than a puncher’s chance — same as they had 2019, same as a year later, same as two years later. Actually, same as the year before they won it.
Those were real chances, too.
That the Chiefs still get those opportunities — despite the statistics gathered from this locker-room poll — is a credit to the few consistent forces they do have. Because the mere opportunities have proven elusive for so many others.
But here’s the thing: Legacies are not built on creating opportunities. They are built on the follow-through.
This story was originally published October 21, 2022 at 5:00 AM with the headline "The Chiefs-49ers is a Super Bowl rematch in theory only. Why KC isn’t the same since."