The Kansas City Chiefs Are Chasing a 3-Peat — Here's How Other Teams Tried (And Mostly Failed) Before Them

Only one team in the Super Bowl era has pulled off the feat — and even then, only sort of.

Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs are trying to make NFL history, as usual. (Courtney Culbreath/Getty Images)

When the 2024 NFL season kicks off tonight, it will feature a familiar sight: Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and the Kansas City Chiefs defending a Super Bowl title. That’s something they’d tried already back in the 2020 season, then did again (successfully, this time) in 2023. Now they’ll aim for an increased difficulty on the assignment, trying to become the first team of the Super Bowl era to win three consecutive championships.

Well, sort of. The last team to win three straight NFL titles technically won Super Bowls for the latter two of those championships: the 1965-67 Green Bay Packers, who started their run a year before the Super Bowl existed. (Before them, a previous FIVE-peat belonged to the 1946-50 Cleveland Browns, though their claim at a legitimately comparable run to K.C. this year is a lot shakier than Green Bay’s.)¹ And since the Packers, eight teams have gone for the 3-peat… falling short each time.

Let’s briefly run through each of them, noting how their bids ended (for good or mostly bad).

1965-68 Green Bay Packers

Why they won: Under coach Vince Lombardi, the Packers had the league’s top scoring defense in both 1965 and 1966, with Willie Davis, Herb Adderley, Lee Roy Caffey, Ray Nitschke and Willie Wood leading the way. The offense was closer to the middle of the league, but it had tons of big names — from QB Bart Starr and RBs Jim Taylor and Paul Hornung to a stacked O-line. In the playoffs, Green Bay suffocated Jim Brown and the Browns in the ‘65 title game and rolled over the Chiefs in Super Bowl I.

How it DIDN’T end: Green Bay wasn’t quite as dominant in 1967, with the defense slipping to No. 3 and Starr posting below-average passing efficiency stats. After closing the regular season with back-to-back losses, the Packers avenged one of those comfortably over the Rams in the playoffs, outlasted the Cowboys in the Ice Bowl, and finally took care of the Raiders with ease in Super Bowl II.

How it ended: That win was Lombardi’s last game coaching Green Bay; he became GM and handed the reins to assistant coach Phil Bengtson. While the ‘68 team’s defense remained strong — they finished 4th in PPG allowed — and Starr actually had a very efficient season passing the ball, he also missed 5 starts and the offense slipped to below average in scoring for the first time since 1959. Losses in four of the team’s last seven contests resulted in the Packers missing the playoffs.

1972-74 Miami Dolphins

Why they won: A year after getting crushed by the Cowboys 24-3 in Super Bowl VI, Miami bounced back to produce the only undefeated full season in NFL history, capped off with a win over Washington in Super Bowl VII. And the team they ran it back with in 1973 was arguably even better; it had a better SRS rating than the undefeated ‘72 squad and won each game of the playoffs by at least 17 points — something that only five other teams in the SB era can claim.²