Young Chiefs Can Do Something Unattained Since ’93 Bills

Surely, the Chiefs’ sterling draft class of 2022 talks about that all the time, right?

“We really don't,” McDuffie said from his locker on Saturday. “I mean, I think we’re all just blessed being here. And I don’t think anybody when we came here expected to go back-to-back-back. But, yeah, last year.”

Last year as in the blowout loss to the Eagles in Super Bowl 59. McDuffie and members of that draft class still in Kansas City – George Karlaftis, Bryan Cook, Leo Chenal, Joshua Williams, Jaylen Watson, Isiah Pacheco and Nazeeh Johnson – had their pride shredded like rubber pellets in the Superdome turf.

“We don’t talk about it,” Cook said last week. “We’ve done some things but we also got humbled last year, so that's also on the resume as well. But no, we just each day strive to put our best foot forward.

“And the organization has picked us to come here and help this team win; that's what we’ve been doing. So, as long as we all got these jerseys on, that’s what we’re gonna do.”

in a Chiefs uniform

Those jerseys have represented the NFL’s best team since they entered the league in 2022, and nearly wound up with the league’s first-ever threepeat after Super Bowl victories in ’22 and ’23.

“We talked about going threepeat,” McDuffie said. “Doing that for the first time, which is cool, but I don't think we ever really talked about going to four in a row. And I think guys are really just day by day, and just really, just being in the moment.”

The moment entering this week is another situation with which they’re all too familiar. They see the Bills for a fourth straight regular season. Buffalo has won all three of those games, although the Chiefs used rematch victories in the playoffs the past two seasons to get to Super Bowls.

The Bills' run of Super Bowls

The Bills got to plenty of Super Bowls during Lodish’s early career. They just didn’t win any of them. Buffalo’s 10th-round selection in the 1990 draft, Lodish played 11 NFL seasons, including six Super Bowls. But what could tie him to McDuffie and the rest of the Chiefs’ 2022 draft choices is the fact he played in Super Bowls each of his first four years.

Lodish joined FB Carwell Gardner and G Glenn Parker in the group of Bills drafted in 1990 to play in Super Bowls each season from 1990-93, one of the most impressive stretches in league annals. Even marred by losses in each game, no team has gone to four straight since.

For now, McDuffie and the Chiefs are simply enjoying each other and taking a snap-by-snap approach.

“I think just over the season,” he said, “that's what allows us to be so great in the playoffs. Because, I mean, every week we go out there, each and every week we show up, we play like, the game’s on the line.

“We usually wait till afterward to really celebrate. Getting humbled last year definitely gives you a little more hunger to go back again.”