It was only four years ago that the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers met in the Super Bowl, but if you feel like that game belongs to a different era, you’re not the only one.
The Chiefs and Niners booked their respective passages to the Feb. 11 Las Vegas showdown on Sunday to secure a rematch of the February 2020 Super Bowl LIV in Miami Gardens, Fla., which, of course, turned out to be the last major sporting event before everything changed.
In football terms, however, two things remain as real and present as they did then.
When they are in form and in their unmistakable flow, Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs’ unapologetic, relentless offense add up to a problem for which there may be no true answer.
And while the 49ers, especially head coach Kyle Shanahan, have successfully answered virtually every question and have built a buoyant modern success story, there is one vital query lingering: Can they get over the line in the biggest game of all?
The way things transpired over the weekend, with Mahomes & Co. too composed and too strong for an error-strewn Baltimore Ravens outfit, and the Niners able to solve the puzzle posed by the courageous Detroit Lions, forces us by default to look back on 2020, a period that felt surreal at the time and is perhaps even more so in reflection.
Whereas the buildup to Super Bowl LIV was overshadowed by the tragic death of Kobe Bryant (and eight others, including his daughter Gianna) in a helicopter disaster a week earlier, it would soon be followed by the ravages of the COVID-19 outbreak, which had such a devastating and chaotic effect on life as we knew it.
Within five weeks of the Chiefs hoisting the Vince Lombardi Trophy, all major sports had shut down. The NCAA basketball tournaments had been canceled, the NBA locked its doors after Rudy Gobert clumsily joked about touching journalists’ recording devices and then became the first player to test positive. Major League Baseball‘s Opening Day wouldn’t happen until July, and it began a 60-game slate in front of empty stands.
Working from home became a new thing for millions, words like lockdown entered common usage, you couldn’t find toilet paper on the shelves, masks became mandatory and desperately sad statistics dominated the news bulletins.
It feels longer than four years ago, truth be told. For many, especially those who hold sports dear, that Super Bowl was a kind of demarcation line, the last major event of pre-COVID America.
It also feels a little odd to think that back then Mahomes still had something of a point to prove, having been blisteringly good in his initial NFL years and seeking a first championship ring to go with his swift-footed, robo-armed quarterbacking excellence.
There was a lot of nuance that went into the clash against the Niners, and for the most part, the San Francisco game plan was outstanding, setting up a 20-10 lead as the end of the third quarter closed in.
But then Mahomes asked offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy to dial up the infamous “Jet Chip Wasp” play, and a huge heave to Tyreek Hill on third-and-15 shifted momentum entirely. A few blinks later, the deficit had been turned into a 31-20 victory, and Andy Reid was being doused in champagne.
The final quarter that day had parallel vibes to the early part of Sunday and segments of this year’s divisional-round win in Buffalo, in the sense that when Mahomes gets rolling, it is a kind of cheat code, where four downs are too many, and 10 yards is not long enough.
Forget about all the loudly-voiced doubts, and how the Chiefs have been betting underdogs the past two weeks and are a slight one again for the Super Bowl. Mahomes Magic is real, and it is the most powerful force in the sport.
“One of the things I think this team is best at is being consistent, no matter what is going on,” Chiefs owner Clark Hunt told reporters. “That’s an important message when you’re being successful, but it’s even more important when things aren’t working for you.”
On the other side, Shanahan has kept his team operating at a truly elite level. There are no rings to show for it, but the 49ers have been modern masters, getting to the NFC Championship four times in five years and being the repeated nemesis for the Green Bay Packers, during and after Aaron Rodgers.
But Shanahan is held to an exacting standard, by fans of his own team as much as anyone, and in two weeks will get a chance to make up for the near misses. He came so close while OC of the Atlanta Falcons seven years ago, before Tom Brady engineered a comeback for the ages, and his Super Bowl LIV run was a few missed steps away on playcalling, to go with Jimmy Garoppolo’s errant late throws.
He knows the significance of the opportunity that awaits. The past can’t be undone, and only time will tell if it can be learned from.
“[The Chiefs] are a hell of a team, they’ve got a hell of a coach, one hell of a quarterback,” Shanahan told reporters. “We have a pretty good idea of how it is going to look. Since we met them last time, it seems like they have been here every year since. We have been trying really hard to get back to that moment.”
A lot has happened between that moment and this one, but certain things hold. Most important of which, perhaps, is the scale of the matchup — a heavyweight chess match — now, just as it was then.
