Are this year’s Chiefs part of an unusual half-century jinx in the NFL?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Only one NFL team in the last 52 years rebounded from a Super Bowl loss to win the next year.
- Twelve of the past 27 Super Bowl runners-up failed to make the playoffs afterward.
- Kansas City players, including Mahomes and Jones, stress urgency after flat opener.
The doors of a three-peat closed on a Sunday in New Orleans last February — figuratively initially but, moments later, literally — along the innards of the Superdome.
Behind the set of double doors protecting the visiting locker room, the silence was so noticeable that conversations among players, owners and coaches could be nearly whispered — until Chris defensive star Chris Jones interrupted the tranquility.
“Hey, it’s gonna hurt,” he said, mic’d up for the team’s “The Kingdom” documentary. “It’s supposed to. It’s a lesson. But it’s also something you can build off of.
“Everybody who is coming back to this (bleeping) circle, it takes everything — everything, man. ... Make sure you carry this (crap) on your chin.”
In those 15 seconds, later described by his teammates, Jones offered a defining line separating the end of 2024 and the onset of 2025 — and the onset of a journey statistically more improbable than defending a Super Bowl title.
The Super Bowl Runner-Up Jinx.
The name itself is a misnomer. It’s not a jinx. It’s reality. The hypothesis and the rationale can change, but the results haven’t.
Only one team in the last half-century has lost a Super Bowl and turned around and lifted the Lombardi Trophy the following year: the 2018 Patriots. We covered the rarity after the Chiefs lost to Tampa Bay in the Super Bowl, but largely tossed it aside this time because, well, Kansas City has made a thing out of bucking trends.
Not this one. The Chiefs went 12-5 after that loss to Tampa Bay, choking a second-half lead to the Bengals in the AFC Championship Game.
And that opener in Brazil last week — that emotionless, walk-through-the-motions outing — shoves a question back into relevance ahead of a Super Bowl rematch with the Eagles on Sunday in KC:
How long does that loss linger?
The ‘Jinx’
The Greatest Show on Turf was not an advertised world tour, but rather an exhibition that unexpectedly revolutionized NFL offenses.
Its leading character was the intended backup quarterback, whose most prominent playing days had been spent in the Arena Football League.
The Rams won the Super Bowl to cap a stunning 1999 season, one year after a 4-12 campaign under the same coach and 10 years after the franchise’s previous playoff appearance. They had an MVP quarterback in Kurt Warner and the league’s No. 1 offense, a moniker they carried three straight seasons in 1999, 2000 and 2001.
And then it was gone just as suddenly and surprisingly as it had arrived.
The 2001 Rams reached the Super Bowl, but the Patriots, 14-point underdogs, pulled the plug on the show. And here’s the pertinence: Forever.
The Greatest Show on Turf never produced another playoff victory. A year losing the Super Bowl, the Rams, behind a 31-year-old quarterback, started 0-5.
This is not a Chiefs prediction. They have a foundation the Rams did not.
But it is a warning. And it is a reminder that the path on which the Chiefs are embarking — the one Jones set in motion last February — is pretty freaking hard to navigate.
Heck, just look at the three teams the Patrick Mahomes-led Chiefs have defeated in Super Bowls.
• The 2020 49ers, as close as a Jet Chip Wasp away from hoisting the trophy a year earlier, finished 6-10.
• The 2022 Eagles went 11-6, losing in the Wild Card round of the NFL playoffs
• Last year’s 49ers, who took the Chiefs to overtime seven months earlier, went 6-11.
None of those Chiefs title wins came easy. They were good opponents. Yet their combined playoff wins the following season:
Zero.
In all, 12 of the past 27 teams (44.4%) to lose the Super Bowl have failed to even qualify for the playoffs the following year.
The reality
The Chiefs are a playoff team, barring injury. You can drive yourself crazy after that loss to the Chargers a week ago, though you ought to not drive yourself that crazy.
But the runner-up trend is lengthy enough — one lonely success story in 52 years — that it would be too easy to chalk it up to coincidence.
I’ve talked to players who have experienced that end of it. Warner told The Star’s Blair Kerkhoff and me that 2002 Rams team never could get the Super Bowl loss out of its collective mind, determined to prove it was a fluke.
They were hung up on it. That’s the game they wanted to play every week. All the while, the initial five teams they actually did play outscored them 124-74. (Warner was injured in the fourth.) Before they knew it, it was too late.
I’ll repeat once more that this fate is not the one I believe awaits this year’s Chiefs — but it’s also why an inexplicably flat performance in a season opener deserves some attention.
And it’s gotten some inside the Chiefs’ facility this week. It’s not just me pointing out the importance of every single week — of how overlooking one game comes with consequences. Mahomes and head coach Andy Reid called out players, even if not individually, in a manner they so rarely do.
“We heard it,” cornerback Jaylen Watson said. “Energy is definitely not going to be a problem this week.”
It’s this week.
And the next.
And the next.
Look, I get it. It can be difficult for a Week 1 game to feel as important as the last game you played, because, let’s be honest, it’s not as important as the last game they played. That’s where all the talk of emotion and intensity from Week 1 and the Super Bowl Runner-Up Jinx starts to blend.
This group has participated in a lot of contests with far more consequence. But if the Chiefs want to reach those games of consequences again, they can’t fast-forward through 19 weeks.
The Eagles coming to KC offers a built-in advantage. Warner said his Rams team was looking to replay that Super Bowl loss to the Patriots. The Chiefs have the privilege of replaying it rather quickly, and on their turf.
“It gives us a little more of an edge that we didn’t win,” said Jones, who previously told me, “They beat the brakes off us. I’ve still got the belt marks on me.”
Mahomes called it one of the lowest points of his career. It’s a cruel twist that the Chiefs can’t help but flip on the film this week and re-live it, with the Eagles coming to town.
But the important part isn’t the single game this weekend that offers the Chiefs a shot at “payback,” as Jones termed it.
It’s the part that failed the overwhelming majority of their predecessors — how they respond in the others.
This story was originally published September 12, 2025 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Are this year’s Chiefs part of an unusual half-century jinx in the NFL?."