Yet another Super Bowl is upon us, which means it is time to discuss, in an incessant loop, the Greatest NFL Teams of All Time. Specifically, as the Kansas City Chiefs shoot for their third straight championship, we must analyze the meaning of their dynasty. Debate where they stand in the pantheon of football excellence. Is Patrick Mahomes the best quarterback the game has ever seen? Is Andy Reid — who’s won three of the last five Super Bowls with Kansas City and leads all active coaches in postseason victories — on par with Vince Lombardi himself? We must do this because, well, this is what it means to be an NFL-worshiping American in the Lord’s year of 2025.
And yet, the Super Bowl is a perennial letdown. Especially where dynasties are concerned.
Let’s go back to the 1980s. You’re me — Jeffrey Pearlman, spending your early teens at 8 Emerald Lane in Mahopac, New York. You’re a football diehard, and every Super Bowl Sunday your parents allow you to throw a big-ass party for your friends. So you order a 48-inch hoagie from Rodak’s Deli. You pick out six or seven two-liter bottles of that (normally) forbidden liquid, soda. You switch on the 21-inch Zenith six hours before the game and absorb the banal analysis while dreaming of last-minute drives, field goals with one second on the clock, a Hail Mary plummeting from heaven into the arms of some plucked-out-of-Division-II-obscurity third-string flanker who, within a week, is doing late-night shows and a Cheerios commercial.
Then the game starts, and your pals leave midway through the third quarter. Because, once again, it blows.
In the 12-year span between Super Bowl XVIII (held on Jan. 22, 1984) and Super Bowl XXIX (Jan. 29, 1995), only two of the matchups were even slightly competitive. Instead, we were gifted such enthralling nail-biters as the Bears’ 46-10 destruction of New England in Super Bowl XX and Washington 42, Denver 10 in Super Bowl XXII.
Thanks to all the routs and blowouts, however, we began to adjust our expectations and hang our hopes on a singular factor that could save the sport: dynasties. Though San Francisco played in two of the dullest Super Bowls on record (they beat the Dolphins by 22 in XIX, then the Chargers by 23 in XXIX), the 49ers won four titles between 1982 and 1995. It felt like we were witnessing a run that sports history would never forget. In the mid-1990s, the Dallas Cowboys picked up the thread, scoring three Super Bowl championships over a four-year span. Troy Aikman! Michael Irvin! Emmitt Smith! These were epic figures having their legends cast in bronze before us.
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But ultimately, it all got stale. The 49ers dynasty led to the Cowboys dynasty. The Cowboys dynasty led to the Patriots dynasty. And now, with Super Bowl LIX upon us, we are on the verge of watching the dynastic Kansas City Chiefs emerge, in this golden age of football parity, as perhaps the greatest reign of them all.
Yet what was once novel and football-redeeming has turned dull and unimaginative. This Super Bowl in particular feels like a spear to the spleen of any gridiron-loving American who craves originality and spark and, well, funky fresh helmets. At the start of the playoffs, we were presented with a string of enticing, never-before-witnessed potential matchups. The sad-sack Minnesota Vikings (0-4 in Super Bowls) vs. the sad-sack Buffalo Bills (0-4 in Super Bowls). The Detroit Lions, birthed in 1929 and plagued by a century of incompetence, meeting the Los Angeles Chargers, 1960-made and the poster children for ineptitude. We could have had Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson slashing through an overwhelmed defense; Bills gunner Josh Allen throwing darts across the field. The Denver Broncos have an out-of-nowhere signal caller, Bo Nix, who would have been the flavor of the month. The Los Angeles Rams feature a rookie pass rusher named Jared Verse who evokes memories of the KC great Derrick Thomas.
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There were so many terrific possible matchups featuring so many breathtaking teams. This isn’t the 1980s, where a small handful of franchises dominated, and the rest were liquid crap. The 2024 Lions won a league-high 15 games. The Vikings won 14, the Bills 13. These are elite clubs with dazzling stars and fan bases that travel. That would have gifted us with a wonderfully fresh and enticing Super Bowl combatant.
Instead, we again have the Chiefs.
To be clear, there is nothing wrong with Kansas City. What the franchise has accomplished is beyond impressive — maybe even more impressive than New England’s recent run. Throughout the season, it routinely felt as if the Chiefs were on the verge of falling apart. They nearly lost to the lowly Panthers and (twice!) to the equally lowly Raiders. They often looked sluggish and unmotivated. Other clubs seemed to have caught up. We, as a sports collective, felt convinced they were old product, ready to be replaced.
And yet … Mahomes is the best quarterback most have ever witnessed (apologies, Steve Pisarkiewicz) and Reid has earned his spot on the coaching Mt. Rushmore. The team plays hard, plays fast, makes precious few mistakes, and owns the fourth quarter. The Chiefs deserve to be in New Orleans, and when they (inevitably) beat the Philadelphia Eagles, it’ll be hard to begrudge the best team winning the biggest game.
But, unless you live in Missouri or otherwise love the Chiefs, what’s to actually like about this? If the Chiefs win the Super Bowl, the sports media will rave about history being made and “the drive for five.” There will be trips to Disney World (that’s still a thing, right?) and headache-inducing Stephen A. Smith GOAT diatribes and ceaseless Mahomes vs. Tom Brady arguments and every single member of the paparazzi spontaneously climaxing as Travis Kelce kisses Taylor Swift atop a float.
The 510,704 residents of Kansas City, Missouri, will once again revel in their giddiness and thank the good lord for making them Chiefs fans.
I and countless other football fans across the country, on the other hand, will have fallen asleep by halftime.
