Former Broncos star has advice for Kansas City Chiefs as they go for Super Bowl repeat
On the road to winning the Super Bowl, the 1997 Denver Broncos pulled a playoff upset of the Chiefs, who had won the AFC West.
Denver later entered Super Bowl XXXII as a double-digit underdog against the Green Bay Packers, who were attempting to win a second straight Super Bowl. But the Broncos won 31-24 and denied the Packers a repeat.
The following season, the Broncos rolled to a 14-2 record and advanced to another Super Bowl, where they beat the Atlanta Falcons. Running back Terrell Davis, who rushed for 2,008 yards that season, is now an NFL Network analyst and talked about Denver’s Super Bowl repeat.
Davis has a unique vantage point having played for a team that stopped an opponent from winning two straight Super Bowls, but later ended up repeating.
During a conference call with reporters on Friday, Davis was asked by Yahoo Sports’ Terez Paylor about the mentality of repeating (as the Chiefs will attempt in Super Bowl LV) and stopping a team from going back-to-back, as the Buccaneers will try to do.
Davis had a suggestion for the Chiefs.
“I think the mind-set was not that we wanted to go back-to-back, we wanted to win a Super Bowl,” Davis said of facing the Falcons in Super Bowl XXXIII. “And it was like, we weren’t thinking about last year’s game.
“And what’s funny is I talked to (former Green Bay coach) Mike Holmgren this morning on a radio show, and he was talking about how he was trying to get the Packers that year to kind of think differently because they were favored so much in that game (Super Bowl XXXII). He just could not get them to understand that ... this team is very good and if you don’t play your best football you’re gonna lose this game.”
The Broncos, having been the underdogs in Super Bowl XXXII, weren’t about to read too much into being the favorite in Super Bowl XXXIII. The Chiefs, by the way, are a three-point favorite over Tampa Bay.
Davis’ advice for the Chiefs: focus simply on beating the Buccaneers on Sunday and don’t think about the implications of repeating.
“It helped us to have that mentality when we went to play the Falcons the next year,” Davis said. “We were the Packers a year before and we realized that if we don’t bring our ‘A’ game in a game like this, it’s a one-game series, this is not a three-games series, five-game series, we can lose this game.
“We were singularly focused on winning one game and understanding that we had to bring our best game to beat the Falcons that year. So that was kind of our mind-set during that time.”
This story was originally published February 7, 2021 at 7:26 AM.
