All week, you’re going to hear about this year being a rematch of Super Bowl LIV between the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs, and how LVIII in Las Vegas might be impacted by the events of that night four years ago in Miami.
Yes, coaches Andy Reid and Kyle Shanahan are still here. So are general managers Brett Veach and John Lynch. And there are still plenty of stars, including Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, undefined, Deebo Samuel, George Kittle, Nick Bosa and Fred Warner. Which is why so much of the window dressing on places such as the Fontainebleau in Las Vegas is the same as it was in places such as the Fontainebleau in Miami.
Other than that? Super Bowl LVIII is as much about the strength of these organizations to adjust, adapt and replenish as it is about continuity and the foundation they have in place. The 49ers have a different quarterback than four years ago. None of San Francisco’s 10 starting offensive linemen remain from LIV. Just 18 players, including injured players, specialists and everything, are still around. Both teams’ offensive coordinators are gone, and one team has changed defensive coordinators twice.
Bottom line: This is a very different game than the one played 48 months ago when COVID-19 was just a mild concern for Americans and the world was weeks from shutting down.
So the dynamics, the matchups, all of it has to be reexamined. And we’ll do that.
But, first, there is one thing to look back on from the first championship of the Mahomes era that could foreshadow next Sunday’s game—and that’s the quarterback’s ability to erase. Through 51 minutes of Super Bowl LIV, it looked like the arrival of Shanahan’s 49ers as the NFL’s next great dynasty. They were leading 20–10. Bosa, then a rookie, was probably the game’s MVP. San Francisco had controlled the game throughout, taking control in the third quarter and picking off Mahomes to start the fourth.
Then, No. 15 changed everything. There were 83- and 65-yard drives, the 44-yard throw to Tyreek Hill on third-and-15 and the 38-yard bomb to Sammy Watkins. There was also the avalanche of bad vibes for a San Francisco team that came undone under the pressure he was applying. Three years later, a similar story was told, with an Eagles team seemingly in control folding late to a rallying Mahomes.
In both cases, Mahomes took everything about how those games were going and erased it completely, writing his own story to take the place of what you thought you knew. And here we are again, with a supremely talented 49ers team built for the here and now, set to try and surmount the challenge of vanquishing the NFL’s championship vampire.
“It feels like David vs. Goliath at quarterback, but vice versa everywhere else,” an AFC executive told me Sunday. “This 49ers team is better, but Kansas City has the better quarterback.”
Super Bowl LVIII Preview: What You Need to Know About Chiefs–49ers
In a Super Bowl full of plots and storylines, that one gives us all a good starting point.
