How the Chiefs and Niners Made It (Back) to the Super Bowl
How the Chiefs and Niners Made It (Back) to the Super Bowl
It's a matchup four years in the making, and the 49ers are hoping for a different outcome than the one they got against the Chiefs back in Super Bowl LIV.
Usually in this space, I use Elo ratings to highlight the paths both Super Bowl teams took to the big game throughout the season, chronicling their ups and downs as each climbed to the top of the NFL mountain. But in the case of Super Bowl LVIII, this isn’t just the tale of the 2023 season — it’s a four-year long story about how we ended up with a rematch that is equal parts familiar and different from the original.
So let’s turn back the clock four years to February 2020.
The Chiefs went into Super Bowl LIV as favorites over San Francisco, by virtue of superior quarterbacking — sorry, Jimmy Garoppolo — a more talented offensive supporting cast, better special teams and a more experienced head coach. Despite all that, though, the Niners took a 20-10 lead late in the third quarter, an edge they held well into the fourth after a Patrick Mahomes interception with 12 minutes to go. San Francisco had K.C. on the ropes, with a win probability that peaked at 96% according to ESPN’s model. But that’s around when Mahomes caught fire, leading three touchdown drives with a 129.5 passer rating, while the Kansas City defense forced two punts, a turnover on downs and an interception. Scoring 21 unanswered points in a shade over five minutes, the Chiefs stormed back to win 31-20 and claim the championship.
That’s where things stood after the last time these teams met on the game’s biggest stage. Here’s how they’ve progressed in the time since:
Kansas City and San Francisco’s paths deviated from one another for a while. The 2020 Chiefs lost just once in their first 15 games of the regular season, returning to the Super Bowl before Mahomes and company were stymied by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Super Bowl LV. The Niners, by comparison, were hit hard by injuries, losing many of their best players for the majority of the season; after struggling to stay near .500 in the first half of the schedule, they collapsed down the stretch to lose seven of their final nine contests and miss the playoffs.
Neither squad started 2021 in impressive fashion. When K.C. and S.F. combined to go 5-8 through Week 7 of the season, their Super Bowl meeting seemed like ages ago, and it would have been hard to forecast a sequel within just a few seasons. But both teams seemed to turn their seasons around at the same moment, with each matching the other’s upward trajectory.
Mahomes and Garoppolo were both Top-10 QBs by passer rating over the remainder of the 2021 season, and so too did Deebo Samuel, Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce rank among the leaders in scrimmage yards. Kansas City’s defense even turned into one of the league’s stingiest down the stretch. Both squads came within blown double-digit leads in the conference championship of making this rematch happen even earlier than it did.
Another pair of relatively slow starts followed in 2022, but the Chiefs found their stride starting with Week 7’s 44-23 dismantling of — who else? — the 49ers in the Bay Area, a game that marked both Christian McCaffrey’s Niners debut and the first pass attempts of Brock Purdy’s NFL career. Kansas City would lose only once the rest of the season… and the same could be said for San Francisco, which found yet another gear when McCaffrey was fully integrated into the offense and Purdy permanently replaced Garoppolo under center. Once again, this rematch might have happened last season if Purdy (and every other S.F. QB) hadn’t been injured in the NFC title game; instead, the Chiefs beat the Philadelphia Eagles in a classic back-and-forth Super Bowl.
Which brings us to 2023. Both Kansas City and San Francisco started the season with winning streaks, then hit a midseason lull — S.F. lost three straight in October; K.C. had an even longer stretch during which they lost 5 of 8. But the Chiefs turned it around to win five in a row and counting, with Mahomes posting his first back-to-back games with a 100+ passer rating of the entire season in the Divisional and Conference Championship rounds. Meanwhile, the Niners have lost only one game with their starters playing since Week 8 — a 33-19 home defeat against the same Baltimore Ravens team that K.C. just shut down in the AFC title game.
In terms of strengths and weaknesses by schedule-adjusted Expected Points Added (EPA) per game, both teams’ profiles have changed somewhat since 2019. Here’s a breakdown of each team’s percentile ranking in various EPA categories in 2019 versus 2023:
With Purdy directing the attack instead of Jimmy G., the 49ers are a better passing team than the one K.C. saw back in 2019, as well as better on offense overall. San Francisco’s defense is down just a tick, particularly against the run, and its special teams and ability to avoid penalties have both regressed, but the 2023 Niners are better by overall EPA than they were four years ago.
As for Kansas City, their offensive output this season was clearly down from 2019, with Mahomes and friends falling from No. 1 in passing EPA per game to No. 13 this year. But the Chiefs’ defense is significantly better now than it was then, in keeping with K.C.’s transformation from an offense-first team who merely got by on defense to one of the league’s best defensive squads who also happens to have a future Hall of Fame QB to bail out the offense whenever they need it.
Still, the 2023 Chiefs were worse by EPA than the 2019 version, while the 49ers got better. That helps explain why, after being favored four years ago, Kansas City is now an underdog whether you look at the Vegas lines or the Elo ratings. In a matchup four years in the making, the Niners are hoping for a different outcome than the one they got back in Super Bowl LIV — and the numbers say they might just get it.
Filed under: NFL, Super Bowl