Fans saw two completely different games on Conference Championship Sunday.
The Philadelphia Eagles dominated the Washington Commanders, 55-23, in the NFC Championship. At one point, the Eagles baited the Commanders into three consecutive offside penalties when lining up to run the “Tush Push.”
However, the AFC Championship lived up to the hype. The Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs clashed in the playoffs for the fourth time in five seasons, and Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen made magic. Kansas City’s wideouts came down with circus passes, and Bills players missed on theirs.
Kansas City won 32-29, beating Buffalo for the fourth time in five seasons.
Each game played out differently, but both had the ending most people expected. As a result, Philadelphia and the Chiefs are facing each other in the Super Bowl for the second time in three years. It’s Kansas City’s fifth Super Bowl appearance in six seasons, while the Eagles are going to their third in eight years.
This success may feel unattainable for a team like the Minnesota Vikings, which hasn’t won a Super Bowl or even returned to the big game since January 1977. However, before they found their success in the last eight years, the Eagles and Chiefs lingered in a similar state as the Vikings. Almost always relevant, sometimes great, rarely bad, and on the wrong end of heartbreaking playoff losses.
Philadelphia made the playoffs four consecutive years from 1978 to 1981. They made their first Super Bowl appearance in Jan. 1981 but lost to the Oakland Raiders. They made the playoffs six times from 1988 to 1996 but couldn’t get past the Divisional Round.
In 1999, the Eagles hired Andy Reid. An assistant under Mike Holmgren in Green Bay, Reid turned Philadelphia into one of the NFC’s top teams. He led them to the Divisional Round in 2000, where they lost to the New York Giants.
However, in 2001, the Eagles began a run of four-straight NFC Championship appearances. They lost their first three, including twice at home, before finally beating the Atlanta Falcons in 2004 to return to the Super Bowl for the first time since 1980.
Unfortunately, they lost 24-21 to the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XXXIX. A lack of urgency in the fourth quarter became a punchline for Philadelphia’s rally that was too little, too late. They returned to the NFC Championship in 2008, losing to the Arizona Cardinals 32-25, making them 1-4 in the title game under Reid.
Philadelphia never returned to the NFC Championship under Reid. In the next two years, they lost in the Wild Card round. In 2011, backup quarterback Vince Young nicknamed them the “Dream Team.” However, the season went sideways, ending in an 8-8 record that left them out of the playoffs.
The Eagles fired Reid one year later, and they endured a four-year stint with Chip Kelly before hiring Doug Pederson in 2016. A year later, they won the Super Bowl in Minneapolis.
Kansas City didn’t have much postseason success after its victory over the Vikings in Super Bowl IV in January 1970. The Chiefs made the playoffs once from 1970 to 1985 and won their first postseason game since the Super Bowl on December 28, 1991.
The Chiefs signed Joe Montana in 1993. They won two playoff games before losing to the Bills in the AFC Championship. It would take another two decades for Kansas City to win another playoff game.
Unlike the run from 1970 to 1985, the Chiefs were in the playoffs seven times from 1994 to 2014. Unfortunately, they lost all seven games, three times losing as the AFC’s No.1 seed in the Divisional round.
Their struggles continued even after they hired Reid in 2013. In the Wild Card round that year, the Chiefs built a 38-10 lead against Andrew Luck and the Indianapolis Colts. Unfortunately, they squandered the lead, losing 45-44 in one of the worst playoff collapses in NFL history.
Kansas City finally broke the playoff win drought in 2015, beating the Houston Texans 30-0. However, they lost the following week to the Patriots. Two years later, the Chiefs had a 21-3 lead over the Tennessee Titans at home before watching another multiple-score lead evaporate. The Titans rallied to win, 22-21.
That was the last Chiefs playoff game in which Patrick Mahomes didn’t start. Still, even Mahomes had to become indoctrinated into the Chiefs’ heartbreak before the dynasty began.
In the 2018 AFC Championship Game, Kansas City led the Patriots 28-24 late in the fourth quarter. However, Tom Brady led a go-ahead touchdown drive with 39 seconds left in regulation. The Chiefs responded with a field goal to send the game to overtime, but Brady led a touchdown drive to give Kansas City one final playoff gut punch before they began their dynasty a year later.
The Chiefs and Eagles eventually came through, though. Following the 2017 season at U.S. Bank Stadium, the Eagles won the Super Bowl by beating the Patriots. Two years later, the Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers to win their first championship in 50 years.
Could the Vikings eventually become the team that NFL fans are sick of seeing in the Super Bowl? They are the most successful team to never win it all, based on all-time winning percentage (.551) and playoff appearances (32).
Unfortunately, they can’t get out of their own way. It isn’t bad enough that they lost four Super Bowls. Somehow, their six conference championship losses since then hold memories that sting worse than any of those Super Bowls.
Maybe the Vikings finally have the coach and quarterback to push through and win a Super Bowl. If we’re lucky, we could see them go multiple times, inspiring envy from other fanbases. We can tell our spoiled kids, who only know about championship parades, that the Vikings always choked back in the old days.
That may feel impossible, but the Chiefs and Eagles overcame that threshold. Now, everyone expects them to win when they play in big games. That’s even if Josh Allen or Matthew Stafford are answering almost every punch Mahomes or Jalen Hurts throws at them.
Regardless of who wins on Super Bowl Sunday, we can expect the loser to come back and contend next year. The bigger question is whether the Vikings can build a team to upset them.