Vahe Gregorian: Why Chiefs-Eagles Super Bowl rematch is about something more for Kansas City

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — First, some perspective courtesy of the wisdom and wit of former Chiefs coach Marv Levy.

The coach who turned 100 last month perhaps is best known for guiding Buffalo to four straight Super Bowls and, alas, losing all four. But Levy is many other things, including a man of letters (with a master’s degree in English from Harvard) who enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in 1943.

All of that went into his response in 1993 when the Bills were preparing for Super Bowl XXVII against the Dallas Cowboys. A reporter asked if the game should be considered a “must-win.”

Not exactly.

“World War II,” Levy responded, “was a must-win.”

Along those lines on this topic, I always think of what Cowboys running back Duane Thomas said just before Super Bowl VI. Asked about getting ready to play in the “ultimate game,” Thomas said, “If it’s the ultimate game, how come they’re playing it again next year?”

So in this more cosmic sense, anyway, the Chiefs on Sunday hardly must beat visiting Philadelphia in a rematch of the humbling 40-22 TKO the Eagles administered in Super Bowl LIX. And it’s certainly not the ultimate game

But if winning Sunday isn’t a necessity, per se, Chiefs and NFL history also suggests it’s in the realm of essential.

Not because the Chiefs need to avenge the Super Bowl, satisfying as payback might be.

And not just because it’s a statement game, though it is very much that: The Chiefs are home underdogs for just the second time in the Mahomes Era, alone in the basement of the AFC West for the first time in forever, and need a momentous win to reassert that they’ve still got the mojo that’s lifted them to five Super Bowl appearances in the last six seasons.

But because of a purely practical point.

Starting the season 0-2 has proven perilous for NFL teams with postseason aspirations. All the more so for those with designs on winning the Super Bowl, something that has only happened three times and not since 2007.

Since the NFL playoffs expanded to 12 teams in 1990 (it went to 14 in 2020), 288 teams started 0-2.

Only 35 (12.15 %) made the playoffs, per NFL statistics updated to include 2024. And it’s not much brighter with the longer potential redemption runway of the 17-game season launched in 2021: Since then, only five of 30 teams (16.7 %) to start 0-2 have rallied to earn a postseason berth.

More to the local point, the Chiefs have started 0-2 15 times — the last in 2014 — and rebounded to make the postseason only once (2006).

None of this is to say the Chiefs somehow are doomed if they don’t beat the Eagles.

Every team, every season, is its own story. And the very fact that Andy Reid is still the Chiefs’ coach pivoted on the 2015 Chiefs recovering from an even more inauspicious 1-5 start — one that led to chairman and CEO Clark Hunt being asked if he would consider firing Reid — to make the postseason.

And if the still-surreal advent of Patrick Mahomes has taught us anything, it’s that these Chiefs — his Chiefs — nearly never can be counted out.

But all of that also was punctured in the last Super Bowl, when the Chiefs fell behind 34-0 before putting up some late points to make the final margin appear far more respectable than the game was.

Between that fiasco and all those bizarre narrow escapes last season, it’s hard not to see them as somewhere between mortal and vulnerable, even in the near wake of their foiled quest to become the first team to win three straight Super Bowls.

For a good long while now, what they’ve been doing since Mahomes arrived has been preposterous and seemingly unsustainable, especially in a league that accentuates parity in every way. That includes scheduling, which helps explain why the Chiefs in the next seven weeks will face the daunting likes of the Ravens, Lions, Commanders and Bills.

One of these days before too long, well, they just won’t be able to sustain the unsustainable.

I still don’t believe that’s now, but they’re now facing a burden of proof they haven’t for some time.

Heck, even the unassuming Reid acknowledges how remarkable, and thus improbable, it’s been. While he was speaking specifically of Mahomes after the AFC divisional round victory over Houston, his words had a broader connotation: “I always tell our coaches, ‘Don’t get used to that.’ I mean, this is unreal. … The stuff he’s doing just doesn’t happen.”

Mahomes demonstrated that all over again in the second half last week against the Chargers in Brazil.

But the Chiefs lost, 27-21, ending an NFL-record 17-game winning streak in games decided by one score. And leaving it an open question just where they are as they stare at the possibility of losing a third straight game for the first time since Mahomes became QB1.

With Rashee Rice suspended for six games and the injured Xavier Worthy (shoulder) questionable for Sunday, Mahomes’ receiver options seem far less dynamic than they looked a few weeks ago. And the defense got plowed around for 394 yards and couldn’t get the ball back when the Chiefs would have had a late chance to rally. Among plenty of other more specific concerns.

Most of all, Reid and Mahomes admitted an almost tangible absence of team energy in the early going.

That doesn’t figure to be a problem Sunday … though it bears mention that it didn’t figure to be one in Sao Paulo, either.

But the Chiefs suddenly are on the spot to make it happen — lest they give more reason to wonder if they still have it ... and put themselves in a precarious position to hoist their way out of.

Not exactly a must-win on any number of levels.

But one that certainly merits reiterating the message Reid said he gave the team when it arrived in St. Joseph for camp.

“The main thing,” he said, “is urgency.”