We haven’t seen a successful Super Bowl title defense since the New England Patriots did so in 2005.
Peter King isn’t expecting the drought to come to an end in the upcoming campaign.
The Patriots will enter the 2019 NFL season as reigning Super Bowl champions and are primed for another deep postseason run. That said, several of New England’s conference foes grew stronger in the offseason, which will make the road back to the championship stage more difficult for Tom Brady and Co. And King, for one, believes the Patriots ultimately will fall victim to the team they narrowly took down this past January.
“I’m picking a Chiefs-Saints Super Bowl,” King wrote in his latest Football Morning In America column for NBC Sports. “I’m picking the team that lost the coin toss and never touched the ball in overtime of January’s AFC Championship Game versus the team that got jobbed on the pass-interference non-call in the NFC Championship Game. Let’s call the 54th Super Bowl the Fairness Super Bowl.”
King has the Chiefs pegged as the No. 1 seed in the AFC playoff picture, followed by the Pittsburgh Steelers, Patriots, Indianapolis Colts, Los Angeles Chargers and Houston Texans respectively. In a rematch of last season’s AFC Championship Game, King predicts Kansas City will squeak out a 27-25 win over New England at Arrowhead Stadium to punch its ticket to Super Bowl LIV.
Arguably the most noteworthy facet of King’s predictions is the new-look Steelers owning the No. 2 seed over the Patriots. Sunday night’s matchup between these two AFC powerhouses at Gillette Stadium could go a long way in determining if King’s take comes to fruition.
