Patrick Mahomes has a history of speaking dreams into existence. Roughly one year ago in Las Vegas, it seemed that he tried to do it again.
Shortly after the Chiefs claimed their second straight Super Bowl win, their star quarterback leaned over to defensive tackle Chris Jones and emphasized that this team's work wasn't done yet. "I want three," Mahomes told Jones, raising the idea that Kansas City could become the first franchise to win three consecutive Super Bowls. Since Mahomes was wearing a microphone for NFL Films, the declaration was recorded for all to hear.
Consider that moment also the official beginning of the overriding storyline in Super Bowl LIX: The Chiefs' pursuit of a three-peat when they meet the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday.
What's equally intriguing is where a victory would place Mahomes -- and head coach Andy Reid -- in the discussion of the greatest of all time. We thought we'd seen an unprecedented run when Tom Brady and Bill Belichick led New England to six Super Bowl wins between 2001 and 2018. Mahomes and Reid have made their own noise in the last six seasons, establishing their own dynasty by winning three Super Bowls between 2019 and 2023, and a three-peat would be something the Patriots never accomplished during their own glory years.
Only one team (the Pittsburgh Steelers, from 1974 to '79) has claimed four Super Bowl victories within a six-season period. Last season, Kansas City became the first franchise in nearly two decades to win two consecutive Lombardi Trophies -- and no other repeat champion ever made it back to the Super Bowl to chase what the Chiefs covet.
"They're doing things right now that are pretty hard to do," said Mike Holmgren, who hired Reid as an assistant with the Green Bay Packers in 1992 and also coached the Seattle Seahawks from 1999 to 2008. "The way the league is set up, you're going to lose players to free agency, and you're probably going to lose coaches, too. But they're back there because [Reid] is a brilliant mind and his players know him well. Even with all the people they've lost, they still have Mahomes. And that quarterback is key."
When asked about the evolution of the legacy Reid and Mahomes have built together, the quarterback acknowledged that history has certainly been on his mind as the championships have stacked up.
"I think you always want to leave a legacy and kind of make your imprint on history," Mahomes said during a press conference last week. "But more than anything, you just want to accomplish a goal that you have with your teammates. When you start in St. Joe (the Chiefs' training camp is held at Missouri Western University in St. Joseph, Missouri), your goal is to win the Super Bowl. We know that's a hard process, we know it's hard week in and week out, but I'm proud of how our guys have gone about that process."
It's been six years since Mahomes sat dejected in his locker room after losing to New England in the 2018 AFC Championship Game, back when he was surprised to hear Brady was waiting to talk to him in the wake of that defeat. Brady was so impressed by what he'd witnessed from the first-year starter that he wanted to share a few words of advice on how to proceed moving forward. He told Mahomes that there would be ups and downs in this league, but to keep doing exactly what he'd done in that first year under center. The Chiefs haven't missed an AFC Championship Game since that day -- their streak is now at seven straight, and this is the fifth Super Bowl Mahomes and Reid have reached together.
Their success is notable, as Holmgren referenced, because of the consistency of that duo. When the Chiefs beat the 49ers in Super Bowl LIV, they were a star-studded group eager to push the franchise to that game for the first time in 50 years. The victory over Philadelphia in Super Bowl LVII was a repudiation of all the skeptics who thought the offseason trade that sent star wide receiver Tyreek Hill to Miami would be the team's undoing. Then came last season, when the Chiefs beat San Francisco again in Super Bowl LVIII after a campaign filled with so much inconsistency and uncertainty that Kansas City was sitting at 9-6 after a Christmas Day loss to the Las Vegas Raiders.
It's impressive enough that the Chiefs have won 23 of 25 games since that upset defeat. Now add in Reid moving into the 300-win club after the Chiefs beat the Houston Texans in the Divisional Round (only three other coaches -- Don Shula, Belichick and George Halas -- are in that select company). And think about Mahomes, who already has done more than Brady at age 29 when it comes to regular-season wins (89 to 70), playoff wins (17 to 12), Super Bowl appearances (five to three) and league MVP awards (two to zero). Brady and Belichick still maintain healthy advantages in terms of their places in history, but you could see those gaps closing in a hurry.
A victory over the Eagles certainly would give the Chiefs' duo a significant boost in that conversation.
"They could be in position to say they did something the Patriots dynasty never did," said ESPN analyst Damien Woody, who won two Super Bowls in New England between 1999 and 2003 and played 12 NFL seasons overall. "New England's dynasty was really two separate deals because they went an entire decade between Super Bowl wins (New England won in 2001, 2003 and 2004 and again in 2014, 2016 and 2018). The Chiefs can say they won three in a row. You know how crazy that is in this era? Those two absolutely would have an argument to make, as far leading the greatest dynasty in NFL history."
The Chiefs have become so successful that they've attained a stature that the Patriots knew all too well during the Brady-Belichick years: Some people are tired of seeing them winning all the time. Whether it's defined as hate, jealousy or simple fatigue, Kansas City has become a villain in some corners of the league. The good times have carried on for so long that even opponents have aired their frustration with the Chiefs' success. Baltimore Ravens cornerback Marlon Humphrey and Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Ja'Marr Chase already have openly said they're rooting against Kansas City.
The Chiefs realize that all comes with doing what they've accomplished thus far. There's also the notion that they receive preferential treatment from officials, which has become a prominent topic on social media. However, Reid has refused to let his team use that as motivation, saying, "Honestly, I don't get into that. I don't use that with the guys. I just want to make sure we get prepped. As coaches, our responsibility is to give them everything we can give them to be even greater than they already are and then make sure we're digging in on plays to help them with that ... There's enough to do just with that where you don't even have to pay attention to the other stuff."
There are many people around the Chiefs who would tell you that Reid and Mahomes have been in the perfect marriage from Day 1. Mahomes is the son of a former Major League Baseball pitcher who discovered football as a sophomore in high school and fell in love from the moment he learned about Friday Night lights in his native Texas. He blossomed under Kliff Kingsbury's direction at Texas Tech, then stepped into the NFL as the 10th overall pick in the 2017 draft. Reid had a blueprint for the quarterback's maturation from the minute Mahomes arrived -- including sitting the QB as a rookie so he could learn behind veteran starter Alex Smith -- while Mahomes had a clear understanding of how much preparation went into chasing greatness.
Reid was a former offensive lineman at BYU who was discovered by Holmgren when Holmgren handled the graduate assistants as the quarterbacks coach on that staff, a position he held from 1982 to '85. It didn't take long for Holmgren to see serious potential in Reid as a coach. Reid was a tremendous listener who took copious notes and understood the value of communication. When Holmgren was coaching the Packers in 1997, he made the decision to move Reid from tight ends coach to quarterbacks coach, even though Reid had never coached quarterbacks in his life.
Part of that decision was based on Holmgren's desire to keep Reid from leaving to join another former Packers assistant, Steve Mariucci, who was coaching the 49ers at that point. The other motivation was to give Reid the chance to coach Brett Favre, which helped Reid land a head coaching job in Philadelphia in 1999 and prepared him for tutoring Mahomes nearly two decades later.
"When I moved Andy to quarterbacks coach in Green Bay, he had to deal with anything and everything with Brett," Holmgren said. "I say that affectionately, because there was a lot of tough love involved in that relationship. I don't know Patrick, but it seems like he's not rambunctious off the field like Brett was. He's a different style of quarterback, but Andy has the ability to work with all types. He found a way with Brett, and you can see how he's worked with Patrick."
There have been a few different phases in the evolution of this coach-quarterback relationship. Reid often sat down with Mahomes in between possessions in the 2018 season, ensuring that the quarterback was seeing everything necessary to succeed. By the time 2022 rolled around -- and the Chiefs had opted to trade their most dynamic weapon, Hill -- Mahomes had transitioned into a style built more around patience and savvy. Opposing defenses had decided to mitigate Kansas City's big-play offense with two-deep shell coverages, so Mahomes and Reid transitioned to a ball-control style that still defines this team today.
The Chiefs were one of the most efficient teams in the league on third downs in 2024, as they ranked second with a 48.5 percent conversion rate. The also have won 12 games this season by a margin of one score or less (including playoffs), which speaks to how special Mahomes is in high-pressure situations.
"He finds ways to get it done," said Eagles cornerback Darius Slay at Super Bowl LIX Opening Night. "He does a great job of not turning the ball over or forcing anything. Everybody thought that when Tyreek Hill left, there would be a [decline] in [Mahomes's] deep ball, but there wasn't. I just think with him losing some great guys like Tyreek, [it] made him a better quarterback. He's reading coverages better, making checkdowns. He's a lot better quarterback than two years ago."
"There's no change in him as you go," Reid told reporters last week when asked about his quarterback's success in clutch moments. "He comes in competitive; he's going to finish competitive right down to the end. The pressure part of it, when things can dilate you a little bit when things are tight, (those moments) don't do that to him. He flourishes in those moments when they're the toughest and he's just -- he's wired that way. I'm sure growing up in a locker room with his dad (Patrick Mahomes Sr.) was a big part of that, or at least a part of it, but some if it is just innate that's given to you. He's one of those guys, the tighter the situation, the looser he plays."
Mahomes has made such a habit of producing game-winning plays in the fourth quarters of Super Bowls that it's become commonplace to expect him to thrive in crunch time. He led the Chiefs on the game-tying drive in regulation of last year's Super Bowl before throwing the winning pass to Mecole Hardman in overtime. He engineered another game-winning drive against the Eagles a year earlier, when he scrambled for 26 yards on a critical play -- despite playing with a painful high ankle sprain -- to set up Harrison Butker's deciding field goal. Mahomes was just as magical in that Super Bowl LIV win, when his completion to Hill on a third-and-15 play sparked a rally that helped Kansas City overcome a 10-point fourth-quarter deficit.
Mahomes now has produced seven fourth-quarter postseason comebacks in his career, second only to Brady -- but he also would be the first to credit Reid for the play-calling in those critical moments. The coach has often been at his best late in games, like when he used pre-snap motion to dial up two easy passing touchdowns for Mahomes in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl LVII or unleashed his quarterback as a runner on read-option plays in both Super Bowl LVIII and this year's postseason (Mahomes had 43 yards and two rushing touchdowns against Buffalo in the AFC Championship Game). Reid also isn't shy about rolling the dice. When the Chiefs faced a third-and-9 situation late in that win over the Bills, Reid called a pass play that Mahomes completed to running back Samaje Perine to seal the win.
It's moments like those that define the brilliance of Mahomes and Reid at this stage of their tenure together. A reporter last week even asked the 66-year-old Reid if there's something about finding great success in his 60s -- as Belichick did in New England -- that is satisfying. In trademark fashion, Reid deflected the question: "I think they put something in the Geritol. I don't know. It's probably the experience, I guess if you had to -- and you have good players, which helps, and good coaches, good organization. We're fortunate to have all those things if there's something in common with that."
"We always talk about Mahomes as he compares to Tom, but I say you can't talk about Bill Belichick without mentioning Andy Reid," Woody said. "There are levels to this when you talk about legacies, but when you talk about the greatest of the greatest, I think about Vince Lombardi, Bill Belichick, Don Shula, George Halas. Andy Reid is in that same room. Think of all the same success he had in Philadelphia and then you come to Kansas City and get Patrick Mahomes. There's no mistaking Andy Reid is one of the greatest coaches we've seen in NFL history, and he needs to be talked about in those terms."
The only question left for Mahomes and Reid to answer is just how great they can be together, because there's something dangerous about a franchise that pairs a generational quarterback with a Hall of Fame head coach at exactly the right time. The 49ers dynasty erupted when Bill Walsh found Joe Montana in the 1980s. The Patriots ascended when Belichick saw what Brady could do. Reid and Mahomes are now testing the limits of our imagination by pursuing things that have never been done in this league.
Maybe that's why it was so easy for Mahomes to announce his desire for a three-peat before he even had time to celebrate being the first team since the 2004 Patriots to repeat.
"I don't know if it was just this one in particular, it's just when you're on that stage and you're celebrating, you start thinking about the guys that are coming back, you think about how young that football team was last year and you knew that we had a chance to be in this position," Mahomes told reporters last week. "Even though you're winning, you enjoy it, but at the same time, you have a bigger picture of your entire career. And I want to have as many chances as I can to be in the Super Bowl."