If the Kansas City Chiefs prove victorious over the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LIX, they will become the first NFL team to win three consecutive Super Bowls.
In fact, the Chiefs have already gone farther than any other NFL team in approaching the coveted “three-peat.” No other team has returned to the Super Bowl following two consecutive wins, yet the Chiefs have given themselves the opportunity to defend their back-to-back titles after defeating the Buffalo Bills in the AFC Championship last month.
Although no team has won three consecutive Super Bowls, others have impressive postseason accomplishments, perhaps none more so than the Green Bay Packers. The Packers won the NFL Championship following the 1965 season (the last before the Super Bowl era), and then the first two AFL-NFL World Championship games following the 1966 and 1967 seasons, which would retroactively be known as Super Bowls I and II.
That no team has yet managed three consecutive Super Bowl victories is pretty surprising, considering how many have won the Vince Lombardi Trophy back-to-back. Including the Packers in 1966 and 1967, those eight teams are the Miami Dolphins in the 1972 and 1973 seasons, the Pittsburgh Steelers in both 1974 and 1975 and 1978 and 1979 (the only team to do it twice), the San Francisco 49ers in 1988 and 1989, the Dallas Cowboys in 1992 and 1993, the Denver Broncos in 1997 and 1998, the New England Patriots in 2003 and 2004, and, of course, the Kansas City Chiefs following the 2022 and 2023 seasons.
The Buffalo Bills also deserve a special mention for having the most infamous “what could have been” story. The team holds the NFL record for most consecutive Super Bowl appearances, making it to the big game four times in a row (after the 1990, 1991, 1992, and 1993 seasons) but failing to win a single one.
Two other teams, the Miami Dolphins and the New England Patriots, have made it to three straight Super Bowls, but Miami lost in their first (1971) before winning in 1972 and 1973, while the New England Patriots won in 2016 and 2018 but lost in 2017.
Third time’s the charm:
- Looking beyond the NFL, championship “three-peats” are rare in other professional sports leagues, with none occurring in the NBA, NHL, or MLB in over 20 years.
- In the NBA, the Los Angeles Lakers won three consecutive titles from 2000 to 2002, while the remarkable Chicago Bulls achieved it twice, in 1991, 1992, and 1993, and then again in 1996, 1997, and 1998.
- The most recent MLB team to win three consecutive World Series titles was the New York Yankees, in 1998, 1999, and 2000.
