On Wednesday, Frank Schwab of Yahoo! Sports published his ranking of the top 25 NFL teams of this quarter century. Two of the Kansas City Chiefs’ teams from this era made his list — both of them in the top 10.
6. 2022 Chiefs
14-3 · AFC No. 1 seed · WonSuper Bowl LVII
The Chiefs went 14-3, got an MVP season from Patrick Mahomes, and Steve Spagnuolo’s defense made strides that would help Kansas City reinvent itself during a dynasty. The three losses came by a combined 10 points, and like most Chiefs teams this era, it was clutch. The Chiefs’ late-game heroics included a last-minute drive to beat the Eagles in the Super Bowl.
2. 2019 Chiefs
12-4 · AFC No. 2 seed · Won Super Bowl LIV
The Chiefs’ first Super Bowl title team in 50 years was the peak of the dynasty, to date. They lost four games but each of them was by seven points or less. Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and Tyreek Hill were the core of a great offense that had a remarkable comeback to beat the 49ers in the Super Bowl.
My take
Not every Super Bowl winner made this list. No teams from 2003, 2012, 2018 or 2021 were included, while two teams each from 2013, 2014, 2019 and 2022 were listed. (Yes, the Chiefs had to share their honor with the 2019Baltimore Ravens and 2022Buffalo Bills — neither of which made it past the Divisional round of the respective season’s playoffs).
Schwab explained his logic this way:
Since 2000, there have been 10 NFL teams to outscore their regular-season opponents by 200 or more points. There are many ways to measure a team’s dominance, but point differential is a simple and arguably the most telling one.
But then Schwab revealed the problem with this reasoning:
And of those 10 teams that outscored their opponents by at least 200 points, exactly zero won a Super Bowl.
But that was OK with Schwab.
That’s variance in a competitive NFL with a one-and-done playoff format. The best teams don’t always win a title. Some of the greatest teams of the past 25 years didn’t even make the Super Bowl. The best team of the past quarter century — perhaps the best team in NFL history — didn’t get a ring. [Schwab is referring to the 2007*New England Patriots, who were undefeated until losing Super Bowl XLII to the*New York Giants]. It happens, and it has happened plenty over the past 25 seasons.
While I’ll give him credit for admitting his approach is “arguably the most telling one,” I don’t totally buy into Schwab’s logic. Personally, I think the NFL postseason formula — winning three (or maybe four) consecutive games against the league’s best teams — is arguably the most telling way to measure a great team.
Anyway, that’s what people told Kansas City fans when their favorite team hadn’t won a Super Bowl for 49 straight seasons.
So I understand why Schawb doesn’t include the 2023 Chiefs, who were 9-6 when they lost to the Las Vegas Raiders on Christmas Day — and then won six straight games on the way to becoming the first team to win back-to-back championships since 2004. But to me, that was an exceptional Kansas City team. It exhibited not only skill and talent, but also perseverance and character.
Still, Schwab includes the 2020 Tampa Bay Buccaneers on his list — even though they were 7-5 after losing to the Chiefs in Week 12. “This was a very good team,” writes Schwab, “that took a while to bloom.” I guess a team can only really bloom when Tom Brady is its quarterback.
So I suppose we’ve learned that we can’t expect one person’s opinion of the best teams over 25 years to match the views of every other person, can we? Perhaps Schwab would have been better off by not trying to explain himself.
“This is my list,” he might have said. “If you disagree, that’s too bad.”