As the 2023 NFL season beckons, the Kansas City Chiefs find themselves in a familiar spot: aiming to become the ninth repeat Super Bowl champions in league lore.
For the second time in four years, K.C. will begin a quest to become the NFL’s first back-to-back champion since 2004.
In careers already rife with historical accomplishments, Chiefs head coach Andy Reid and quarterback Patrick Mahomes will give it another shot as they look to end the longest drought in NFL history between repeat champs.
A deep dive via NFL Research shows just how much history could be in store for the 2023 Chiefs and how much they’ve already accomplished in the Reid-Mahomes era.
Mahomes and Reid can become the seventh head coach-starting QB tandem to repeat as Super Bowl champs -- and the first to do so since New England’s Bill Belichick and Tom Brady in 2003-04. However, Reid and Mahomes would become just the fourth duo to win three or more Super Bowls, joining the aforementioned Belichick and Brady (six Super Bowls won), the Steelers’ Chuck Noll and Terry Bradshaw (four) and the 49ers’ Bill Walsh and Joe Montana (three) in the NFL’s all-time elite.
Carrying a seven-season AFC West-winning streak into the season, the Chiefs have already become the first team to host five consecutive conference championship games.
With Kansas City’s run of success, Reid has climbed up the all-time coaching ladder and is almost certain to move up another rung in 2023. Entering the year, Reid’s 247 career wins are fifth all-time, just three behind Cowboys legend Tom Landry’s mark of 250.
Amazingly, Mahomes is tied for the most career playoff wins among active quarterbacks despite having played in just six seasons. He has 11 career postseason victories (tied for eighth in NFL history), tying him with new Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers, whose 11 playoff wins came in 18 seasons with the Packers.
Having become the first player to ever win multiple Associated Press NFL Most Valuable Player accolades and Super Bowl MVPs in a five-season span, Mahomes can now venture to be just the seventh player to win a third NFL MVP.
The amount of history and records set and in reach for Mahomes, Reid and the Chiefs is dizzying.
Of course, chief at hand for Kansas City is ending the NFL’s two-decade-long drought of crowning a back-to-back Super Bowl winner. The quest kicks off on Sept. 7.