The story line heading into the Super Bowl revolves around the Kansas City Chiefs’ quest to become the first team to win three straight Super Bowl titles.
Just don’t call it the NFL’s first three-peat.
While all eight teams that won back-to-back Super Bowls before Kansas City did it the past two seasons lost before making it back for a third, the NFL has had two runs of three straight championships — both by Green Bay.
Curly Lambeau’s Packers won the NFL titles from 1929-31 before there was even a postseason and Vince Lombardi’s crew in the 1960s also did it. Green Bay won the NFL title in 1965 — the year before the AFL and NFL champs first played in what is now known as the Super Bowl — and then the Packers won the first two Super Bowls against the AFL champions for an NFL three-peat that the players still take pride in having achieved.
“If Kansas City wins, I don’t want to hear about the only three-time champions,” Hall of Fame linebacker Dave Robinson said. “That’s BS.”
Robinson’s Packers won the 1965 championship with a 23-12 win over Cleveland, holding Jim Brown to just 50 yards rushing in his final NFL game.
The Bills won the title in the upstart AFL that season, beating the Chargers 23-0.
“There was no doubt in anybody’s mind, AFL guy or NFL guy, that the Green Bay Packers were the best team in pro football at that point,” Robinson said. “It wasn’t close.”
A few months later, the league agreed to merge. They played separate regular-season schedules in 1966-69 before the merger became fully operational in 1970, but the champions of both leagues played for the ultimate prize in pro football in what later became known as the Super Bowl.
The Packers easily beat the AFL’s best, topping Kansas City in the first Super Bowl, 35-10, and then beating Oakland 33-14 the following year.
Lombardi retired as Packers coach after that game and the dynasty ended with Green Bay missing the playoffs in 1968 and the AFL’s New York Jets upsetting Baltimore in Super Bowl 3.
“If he stuck around one more year, we would have won three straight Super Bowls,” Robinson said. “No one thought the Super Bowl would be as big as it was because the NFL was a landslide over the AFL those years. We would have beaten the Jets. They were a fine team, but we would have beaten them.”
Robinson, who grew up cheering for the New York Giants, is backing the Eagles on Sunday, but more for his attachment to fellow Penn State alum Saquon Barkley than any deep-seated hatred of the Chiefs.
While the Packers do feel slighted, they also respect what the Chiefs have accomplished these last few years with coach Andy Reid, quarterback Patrick Mahomes and tight end Travis Kelce.
[Related: Hall of Fame meter: 10 Chiefs, Eagles with legacies on the line in SB LIX]
“First of all, yes, it does bother me,” Hall of Fame guard Jerry Kramer said in a phone interview. “I’m aware of it. I’m not crying. I’m not hysterical. I’m not having a fit. But there’s a little resentment there. But when I look at the Kansas City Chiefs and I see the quality of play and I know the coach from Green Bay and I watch Mahomes and Kelce, they’re doing everything well. They are a great football team. I understand that, and I appreciate that, and I know how difficult that is.”
Even if the Chiefs do win Sunday for their third straight championship and fourth in six years, the Packers still hold something over them. Green Bay also won NFL titles in 1961-62 and is the only team with five championships in a seven-year span.
“We’ll have to start talking about five out of seven,” Kramer said. “They still have a little hill to climb. I’ve gone from three in a row to five out of seven. I hope they do it, really. My life has been complete. I’ve had a wonderful ride.”
Reporting by The Associated Press.
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