Sam McDowell: The Chiefs' three-peat pursuit has longer odds than a 'miracle'

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The confetti fell onto the Las Vegas field, red, white and yellow flakes the backdrop for an exchange between Patrick Mahomes and Chris Jones.

Those two stood on the stage inside Allegiant Stadium, awaiting recognition as the first repeat Super Bowl champions in a generation. But just seconds beforehand, Mahomes had another thought.

“Hey, we’re not done, dawg,” he said. “I want three.”

“We gotta get three,” Jones replied.

“No one’s ever got three,” Mahomes said. “I want back-to-back-to-back.”

The Kansas City Chiefs open their playoff journey Saturday, when the Texans visit GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium for the AFC divisional round.

For however long this postseason ride lasts, you’ll hear about the three-peat ... and then you’ll hear its insistent dismissal.

“You don’t ever go there,” Chiefs head coach Andy Reid said.

Well, they did go there, at least that one time in Las Vegas.

And privately? It influenced much of their season.

That’s not a reference to the outside noise. It’s a reference to the thought — the blueprint, even — from the inside.

A Chiefs front office that has prioritized preserving its championship window in the Mahomes Era turned the knob toward an all-in strategy, even if slightly. OK, so let’s call it a mostly-in strategy.

Two years after a superstar’s demand to be the highest-paid player at his position spurred a trade out of town, the Chiefs guaranteed 30-year-old defensive tackle Jones $95 million in the initial three years of a contract extension.

And as the trade deadline neared in early November, the Chiefs not only acquired wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins but attempted to make a deal for cornerback Marshon Lattimore, an expensive player for 2024 who would likely have put some dead money on the books for 2025. (The Commanders swooped in and offered the Saints a better package of draft picks in exchange for Lattimore.)

“If that was last year,” Chiefs general manager Brett Veach said when I asked him if the three-peat had motivated their trade deadline attempts, “we wouldn’t have made that call.”

The Chiefs are particularly motivated, influenced, to be the first team in NFL history to do it, in other words.

Can you blame them?

It’s a once-in-a-generation opportunity. The salary-cap era of NFL football is specifically designed to prevent what they are trying to accomplish over the next four weeks. It’s the league’s equalizer, but the Chiefs have spent the last half-decade making the rest of the league appear inequitable.

That’s why a three-peat is hard.

But just how improbable is it? Well, how about more improbable than the greatest upset in sports history?

A miracle, they called that one.

I’ll show the work here:

1. Using the Las Vegas sportsbooks odds and the listed moneylines, I first dug up the Chiefs’ chances of qualifying for the playoffs each of the last two seasons. Then I calculated their implied odds in every playoff game they played — because, of course, to win the Super Bowl, they had to win them all.

So that’s the implied odds of reaching the playoffs in 2022 and then beating the Jaguars, Bengals and Eagles to win the first Super Bowl.

And then the implied odds of reaching the playoffs and beating the Dolphins, Bills, Ravens and 49ers to repeat in 2023. (If you’ll recall, the Chiefs were underdogs in each of their final three postseason games last year.)

2. Next, to layer in this season, the potential for a third straight Super Bowl, I calculated the Chiefs’ chances to make this postseason (82.7%). And then I multiplied in their current Super Bowl implied odds, which right now sit at just under 20%.

In totality, that is precisely what has been required, and remains required, of the Chiefs to complete the thing they don’t like to talk about: the three-peat.

So, the sum: 1 in 1,231.

Seriously.

Those are the odds — 1 in 1,231 — of this three-peat journey being completed from its start to finish. The odds that, by the way, take into account the fact this team employs Patrick Mahomes, the most successful playoff quarterback in league history.

Let me put 1 in 1,231 into perspective.

About 15 years ago, two authors explored the chances of the United States men’s hockey team winning gold at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. They ran simulations and determined the Americans’ chances were probably somewhere around 1 in 1,000 to win the 12-team tournament.

They made a movie about that run.

They literally called it “Miracle,” a nod to one of the most famous broadcasting calls in sports.

There was a better chance of a miracle than there is of winning three straight Super Bowls.

How about that, huh?

There are plenty of other fun comparisons with the numbers. This year’s Patriots, for example, had the longest shot of winning the Super Bowl before the 2024 season began. They were listed at 300-to-1 before the year. So the team that the Vegas oddsmakers deemed the worst in the NFL had a four times better chance to win this year’s Super Bowl than the Chiefs winning three straight titles.

The 1999 Rams are the longest shot ever to win a Super Bowl. They were listed at 150-to-1 in the preseason. Eight times better chance to win a Super Bowl than the Chiefs winning three straight.

Continue? Sure.

That number — again, 1 in 1,231 – would be roughly the equivalent of Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker making 59 straight field goals. It would be roughly the equivalent of Russell Wilson, the only quarterback in the league this year to complete at least half of his downfield throws, to complete 12 straight passes 20-plus yards downfield.

To be clear, if not obvious, the Chiefs aren’t there yet. They haven’t completed 1 in 1,231. There is a lot of work to do, actually.

They’ve done the heavy lifting for 2 1/2 years, and yet they still have just a 19.8% chance of a three-peat. That’s why this is extraordinarily difficult.

The late-80s 49ers and early-90s Cowboys reached NFC championship games in their quests for three-peats and fell short. And guess what? The odds suggested they would fall short, even after inching that close. That, too, is why this is difficult.

It’s also why the you should push a few more chips toward the center of the table to do what the 49ers and Cowboys couldn’t. The Chiefs made an exception this year, even if a modest one.

Because the attempt itself is exceptional.