Why Chiefs are girded for more ahead than they were last time they won the Super Bowl
When last the Chiefs were Miami-bound, to play in Super Bowl LIV in February, we were consumed with the parallels between that version of this franchise and the last one to win a Super Bowl 50 years before.
As a golden opportunity converged with the golden anniversary, it was easy to discern similar alignments of the stars and pathways.
Each endeavor was led by the Hunt family, Lamar then and Clark this time. Each was orchestrated by fascinating, innovative coaches who even shared such history as uniquely creative fathers: Hank Stram’s was “The Wrestling Tailor”; Andy Reid’s was an artist for Disney who created sets for movies, musicals and plays.
Both coaches’ considerable visions were brought to life by superlative quarterbacks of their times, Pro Football Hall of Fame-bound Len Dawson in 1969 and presumptive HOFer Patrick Mahomes today. Just for good comparable measure, each star even suffered early-season knee injuries that made for mass local panic but were weathered by stand-ins before their returns.
And on it went, from the voracious incentives ingrained by piercing season-ending losses the years before their rise to such details as each possessing dynamic safeties from Louisiana State (Johnny Robinson; Tyrann Mathieu). One had the “Honey Bear” in Willie Lanier; the other the “Honey Badger” in Mathieu. Etc.
Naturally, some aspects didn’t quite correlate. While last season’s defense ultimately emerged as a key asset, that 1969 defense was among the best in pro football history:
(By way of example, the group that would come to have more Hall of Famers in the starting lineup, six, than not, five, allowed fewer points in three postseason games, 20, than last season’s Chiefs did in the first quarter of their first playoff game against Houston, 21.)
But any distinctions aside, the glory was the same when the Chiefs beat the 49ers 31-20 to finally end a half-century drought … while evidently poised for more ahead.
They are 11-1, after all, as they head back to Miami this week to take on the Dolphins, a return to the scene of the sublime that doesn’t quite move Reid to pause and reflect.
“The game and all was great,” he said Wednesday. “But two different scenarios.”
The coincidental moment, though, speaks to two different scenarios in a much more momentous way: pivotal differences between what went awry 50 years ago and what seems to remain abundantly promising now.
“It’s a completely different end of the spectrum,” said Stram’s son, Dale, who is as attuned to the trend lines of the franchise as anyone. “This is such a vibrant young team. Really, Dad’s team aged out probably after ‘71.”
And suffered a stunning setback in 1970, one this season’s team already evaded by clinching a playoff berth in a 22-16 win over Denver last week.
Fifty years ago this Saturday, in the first season of the NFL-AFL merger and its four-team playoff bracket, the defending champion Chiefs were eliminated from a chance to repeat with a 20-6 loss at Oakland.
They finished the season 7-5-2, initiating a sequence of bizarre twists that would lead to not winning another playoff game for 22 years after the 23-7 smothering of the Vikings in Super Bowl IV.
While some believe the 1971 team was the best in franchise history, only to suffer the shattering double-overtime playoff loss to Miami, a sea change already was bubbling in the Super Bowl encore year.
The NFL Films’ retrospective on that 1970 season was entitled “To Be Champions Again.” Instead, the early elements of erosion were setting in on a would-be empire, which had won three AFL championships since 1962 and appeared in two of the first four Super Bowls.
Perhaps that distinction in then and now can be encapsulated in the fact that Dawson was 35 that season, Robinson 32, while Mahomes is 25 and Mathieu 28 now — emblematic of a nucleus in its prime.
“The leadership core of that team had gotten old,” Stram said. “And Dad was so sentimental.”
Not so old in 1970, though, that it wasn’t yet capable. The defense led by Hall of Famers Bobby Bell, Lanier, Robinson, Buck Buchanan, Curley Culp and Emmitt Thomas remained formidable. “Terror Incorporated,” John Facenda called it on NFL Films.
And it bears mention that those Chiefs would have been in the postseason under today’s playoff format.
And even would have had a different record under today’s rules:
A 17-17 tie against Oakland earlier in the season came only after Ben Davidson’s spearing of Dawson led to a brawl and offsetting penalties that negated a first down that would have put it away … and would have stood today under a rule change prompted by that very moment.
Instead, the Raiders got the ball back, and George Blanda hit a late 48-yard field goal … through uprights then still at the goal line.
A year later came the Dolphins debacle in the final game at Municipal Stadium. That came to signify the end of an era in more ways than one. As my friend Michael MacCambridge wrote in “The Aftermath” chapter of his book, ‘69 Chiefs: A Team, A Season And The Birth of Modern Kansas City, “The move to Arrowhead Stadium only underscored the aging of the Chiefs’ key players and the passage of time. Buck Buchanan was never going to look right playing on artificial turf. Len Dawson wasn’t meant to wear the Stram-designed shiny red game shoes.”
Said Dale Stram: “Everything changed after that.”
Lamentable as the downfall came to be, this isn’t so much a cautionary tale as a contrasting one.
A year after finding similarities that seemed so irresistible, now it seems equally meaningful to distinguish the differences 50 years later.
First, there is the simple matter of the Mahomes Factor, in part because of the simple age difference with Dawson in their times and in the state of the game.
Dawson was a fantastic quarterback, not to mention among the marquee faces of the NFL and part of any Mt. Rushmore of the Kansas City sports scene.
But Mahomes is something else altogether: a revolutionary force in the game doing things no one has ever done before in ways that defy imagination and, often, gravity.
With Mahomes, the Chiefs seem destined to always contend and usually win and seldom if ever will be out of any game … as three double-digit postseason rallies last season affirm.
He is on a trajectory to be on any Mt. Rushmore in national, and maybe international, sports history.
But beyond the difference in cumulative team age and Mahomes’ transcendent talents is another substantial point:
The franchise now enjoys a certain front-office harmony and synergy that came to be lacking with those Chiefs.
Stram and Lamar Hunt were extremely close for a long time, and parts of their legacies are entwined — particularly in the birth and animation of the first decade of the franchise.
But as Hunt diversified his interests and delegated more to Jack Steadman, the crucial behind-the-scenes work became increasingly contentious one way or another.
“I think really one of the biggest mistakes Dad ever made was trying to get all these different titles and getting more and more power, and I think that had to do with his wanting to be able to be in touch more with Lamar one-on-one without having to deal with Jack,” Dale Stram said.
As issues between Stram and Steadman escalated over time, those titles didn’t do much for Hank Stram, They didn’t come with a raise, for one thing, Dale Stram said, “and they diluted his time with a bunch of stuff that didn’t help him win.”
Meanwhile, with few so-called football people in the front office, Stram fiercely tried to keep sway over what he could control: the all-encompassing elements of the football aspect itself.
He might have prospered more by delegation himself, but the resources weren’t necessarily there … and it’s hard to know if he would have let go, anyway.
Out of those binds came a decline, with the Chiefs going 20-20-2 in Stram’s final three seasons, punctuated by a 5-9 1974 season that led to Steadman declaring to Hunt that one of them had to go.
“Oh, lad, this is a very sad day in the history of the Kansas City Chiefs,” Hunt told Stram, according to MacCambridge. “I’ve decided to make a coaching change.”
Flash-forward to the here and now, in which at least part of Reid’s success has stemmed from his willingness to surrender the control he once wielded in Philadelphia in a coach-GM role.
Moreover, Reid and general manager Brett Veach enjoy a strong give-and-take relationship forged through a past together that began with Reid hiring Veach as an intern in Philadelphia … and by Reid coming to to trust the keen eye and resourcefulness of Veach.
By all indications in what Hunt calls a “virtuous circle” catalyzed by Reid, each also has a thriving relationship with Hunt and president Mark Donovan.
Consider, too, the more recent upheaval in the franchise that prompted some structural safeguards: When Clark Hunt ousted GM Scott Pioli after the 2012 season, he created a new flow chart in which Reid, Veach and Donovan now all report directly to him.
None of which in any way assures the dynasty Chiefs players and fans openly declared a goal after winning their first Super Bowl in 50 years. Or guarantees a repeat, for that matter. That hasn’t happened in the NFL in 15 years, after all.
But all of which suggests the similarities between last season’s team and its predecessor 50 years ago were far more prevalent than between the teams working on encores, making for a reassuring foundation for what could be yet to come.