NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and the Kansas City Chiefs are pursuing history and a few of Taylor Swift’s records.
Saquon Barkley, Jalen Hurts and the Philadelphia Eagles stand in their way.
The Chiefs (17-2) will try to become the first team to win three straight Super Bowls when they face the Eagles (17-3) on Sunday in the Superdome.
It’s a rematch from two years ago when Hurts nearly led the Eagles to a championship only to watch Mahomes snatch it away by rallying Kansas City to a 38-35 win on Harrison Butker’s 27-yard field goal with 8 seconds left.
Mahomes lifted the Chiefs to an overtime win against San Francisco in another Super Bowl rematch last year. Now, they’re poised for a three-peat, a word coach Andy Reid doesn’t use much.
“I think the only time I’ve heard him say it is to the media whenever y’all ask him about it,” Mahomes said. “He’s very locked in on just, ‘How can we be great with our cadence today at practice?’ so that’s just the stuff that Coach Reid focuses on.”
Reid won more games than any coach in franchise history during his 14 seasons in Philadelphia but couldn’t win the big one, going 1-4 in NFC championship games and losing a Super Bowl to the Patriots. He went right to Kansas City after the Eagles fired him following the 2012 season and has built a dynasty thanks to Mahomes, Kelce, Chris Jones and others.
“You don’t have time to think about all that,” Reid said of the three-peat. “You’re focused in on the job at hand here and that’s playing against a great Eagles team.”
Jones, the three-time All-Pro defensive tackle, echoed his coach’s viewpoint.
“We don’t talk about no three-peat,” Jones said. “I think that’s what we’re here for. We understand that. We understand there’s one more game until the offseason and we can do whatever we want to do. Our main focus is making sure we’re prepared for the Eagles.”
No matter what the Chiefs say, everyone else is talking about it. No team has done it in the Super Bowl era, though the Green Bay Packers won an NFL championship in 1965 and followed by winning the first two Super Bowls. Kelce even started all the three-peat talk on stage last year when he said the team’s goal was to win three.
“This is gonna be our biggest test yet,” Kelce said. “They got a lot of great players but the biggest thing is they play great together. You could see their communication. You could see the accountability they have, especially in the secondary. It’s not gonna make my job any easier.”
These Eagles are different from the group that fell just short against Kansas City in Arizona two years ago.
They have the NFL’s most dynamic player in the backfield. Barkley rushed for 2,447 yards with seven touchdowns of 60-plus yards in the regular season and playoffs.
“The goal has always been to win it, not just to get here,” Barkley said.
Losing to the Chiefs two years ago only motivated Hurts even more. He’s determined to hoist a Lombardi trophy and even had a photo of him walking off the field with Kansas City’s red and yellow confetti falling around him as the background on his phone.
