Super Bowl LVIII Will Put Patriots-Chiefs Comparisons Into Perspective

The Kansas City Chiefs have an opportunity to do something rare in their Super Bowl LVIII matchup with the San Francisco 49ers in Las Vegas.

They can capture back-to-back Super Bowl victories, which in turn would finally give credence to the comparisons between them and the early-aughts New England Patriots — the last team to accomplish that feat.

The Patriots-Chiefs comparisons are something that has been floating around for a few seasons now, despite the fact they never really made sense up to this point. It’s been expected Kansas City could get to a point where it matched the dominance of those New England teams but needed the time to actually do so.

It’s easy to compare individual aspects of both runs.

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Bill Belichick parlayed his other-worldly defensive mind to make his opponents look helpless at times. Andy Reid has done the same thing on the offensive side of the ball, making the rest of the league look foolish on occasion. Tom Brady was the perfect person under-center for those New England teams, coming through in clutch moments time and time again. Patrick Mahomes is a magician and has the ability to change the game with every snap of the football. Charlie Weis, Romeo Crennel and Eric Mangini were all lauded as members of Belichick’s staff, but never really found success once they left to take head coaching jobs. Eric Bienemy and Matt Nagy have followed similar paths, though Doug Pederson has figured it out on his own.

That’s the exact opposite of using “context” when discussing the parallels of each run, however.

The Patriots and Chiefs played different games.

New England was tasked with building something during the new salary-cap era, which was designed just a few years earlier to prevent dynastic runs. Kansas City essentially has followed that blueprint. It was also a much more physically demanding game two decades ago, as the Patriots essentially bullied their way to Super Bowl XXXVI in 2001. The Chiefs, up to this season, outpaced their opponents in victories.

Kansas City can boast about how they found Mahomes, however. The Chiefs maneuvered to grab him in 2017, knowing he’d sit for a year before they unleashed him onto the league with dominant results. The Patriots just got lucky when they drafted the greatest quarterback ever.

It’s fun (and also infuriating) to make these comparisons. It’s what we do with almost everything, but the fact of the matter is we haven’t gotten to a point where these comparisons between New England and Kansas City make sense. If the Chiefs are standing on the podium at Allegiant Stadium on Sunday, those comparisons become very real.

It’s all fluff until then, however.