PHOENIX — For the first 35 years of its existence, you may recall, the Lamar Hunt Trophy annually bestowed upon the AFC champion had never so much as been displayed in Kansas City. Chances are some Chiefs fans didn’t even know what it was.
That distinction would be depressing enough for any AFC competitor.
But it stood as particularly mocking to the Chiefs, founded in Dallas and moved to Kansas City by the brilliant and revolutionary Hunt, but since 1970 unable to replicate their essential place in the NFL’s early Super Bowl history.
So when the Chiefs played host to the dynastic Patriots in the AFC Championship Game on Jan. 20, 2019, part of the cultural contrast in the leadup was the trophy having become so commonplace for the Patriots that coach Bill Belichick had tended to just fling it aside — like one of my nephews did with one too many bobblehead gifts a few Christmases ago.
The Chiefs couldn’t reel it in that day, falling in overtime in another form of playoff heartbreaker.
But that first full season with Patrick Mahomes portended an infinitely brighter future, one that has included the Chiefs winning three of the next four Hunt trophies to earn more Super Bowl berths in four years than in their entire previous history.
And this one’s about making a different sort of history.
On Sunday, they landed in Phoenix for a final week of preparation to take on the Philadelphia Eagles on Feb. 12 in Super Bowl LVII, making for a full-circle arrival back where they began the season with a 44-21 victory over the Cardinals.
“We kind of hit on (that) in training camp,” linebacker Nick Bolton said last week. “On how blessed (we are) with the opportunity to start and end at the same place and (how) it’s about everything that we do in between to get to there.”
The in-between was a 14-3 regular season and playoff wins over the Jaguars and Bengals, who had beaten the Chiefs three times in a row, including last season’s AFC title game.
The now is a matchup bursting with colorful subplots:
Chiefs coach Andy Reid against the franchise he guided for 14 years before being promptly recruited to rescue the Chiefs; Eagles coach Nick Sirianni coaching against the franchise for which he was once an assistant coach only to not be retained by Reid; the Brothers Kelce playing against each other’s teams, unprecedented in the Super Bowl; and the landmark of two Black quarterbacks playing in a Super Bowl.
“The guys who came before me and Jalen (Hurts) set the stage for this,” Mahomes said last week. “Now, I’m just glad we can kind of set the stage for guys that are kids that are coming up now.”
But another sort of historical significance looms over this game for the Chiefs, Reid and Mahomes.
And it loops back to the franchise perspective on the trophy named for the father of chairman and CEO Clark Hunt, for whom it’s more Holy Grail than trinket given its emotional connection to his late father.
“One of the things about going 50 years between Super Bowls is it teaches you how much to appreciate it …” Hunt said after the Chiefs fended off the Bengals 23-20 in the AFC Championship Game. “Over the last five years, we’ve been blessed playing in five straight AFC Championship games, all here at home, and the three Super Bowls …
“It’s special but we’re not going to take it for granted. And, yes, hopefully, we’ll get out there and try to claim another Lombardi (Trophy that goes to the Super Bowl winner).”
That’s just the thing:
No matter how much we all believe the Super Bowl is a realistic prospect every year that the Chiefs have Mahomes (and particularly every year Mahomes is with Reid … and general manager Brett Veach), no matter how much this one might feel like a bonus given the offseason trade of Tyreek Hill and the young secondary, there’s no way to know how many more times they’ll get to this stage.
Just consider the Chiefs of the late 1960s.
Stocked with future Pro Football Hall of Famers who won three AFL titles and appeared in two of the first four Super Bowls (winning Super Bowl IV), they nonetheless soon faded and then spiraled.
The Chiefs of that era were special, to be sure, and part of the DNA of the modern game from their offensive innovations to their pioneering depth of integration.
But there was another frontier to be attained.
And harsh as it might sound, perhaps Pittsburgh great Dwight White articulated the point well with his words that begin the NFL Films “America’s Game” documentary series episode on the 1975 Steelers:
“There are two categories of Super Bowl participants that nobody remembers,” he said. “One, the team that lost the game; and, two, the team that only won one.”
So this is the chance to create another dimension of memories.
Win a second Super Bowl now, and Reid would become one of just 13 NFL coaches to do so … and would stand just one away from the ultra-elite tier of four men to win three or more. To do it against Philadelphia and thereby become the first coach to be his former team in a Super Bowl would make it all the more memorable.
Win a second Super Bowl in his fifth season as a starter, and Mahomes would become one of just 12 NFL quarterbacks to win two … and, like Reid, be one away from the rarefied group of four to have won more than two.
But this isn’t just about their legacies. It’s about that of a franchise and a devout fan base enjoying a remarkable five-year, and presumably counting, run after decades in the wilderness.
The journey has been so riveting and amazing, any follower could feel, as to deserve the distinction only another Super Bowl win could produce.
Then again, any sports fan knows too well that “deserve’s got nothing to do with it,” as Clint Eastwood’s William Munny character says as he shoots Gene Hackman’s Little Bill Daggett in “Unforgiven.”
The Chiefs hardly need to be told this, and you can bet they’ll be fighting for their right to Lombardi … especially after the agonizing way the last two seasons ended.
And losing would hardly be as empty as all those years of being so far removed from all this as to even win the Hunt trophy, which they competed directly for only once prior in Buffalo in 1994.
It’s also true that Duane Thomas of the Cowboys had it right just before Super Bowl VI when he was asked about getting ready to play in the “ultimate game.”
“If it’s the ultimate game,” he told reporters, “how come they’re playing it again next year?”
So it’s about right here, right now, the only time that can be taken for granted.
