What Defines an NFL Dynasty?
Dynasties are ubiquitous in sports history. The 1960s saw only a single year in which the Boston Celtics weren’t champions. Later on, the NBA rode the success of the Showtime Lakers and the Larry Bird Celtics to superstardom, then the '90s Bulls sent the NBA to global dominance. Wayne Gretzky led the Edmonton Oilers to define the 80s for the NHL, becoming synonymous with hockey in the process. Manchester United was simply untouchable for anyone else in the Premier League in the 1990s. It is impossible to discuss football in the 21st Century without mentioning the names “Bill Belichick,” “Tom Brady,” or “New England Patriots.”
In the present day, some sports leagues are distancing themselves from their history of dynasties. For example, the NBA is experiencing its highest level of championship parity ever in the 2020s, with no repeat champions so far this decade, and the last great basketball dynasty in Golden State seemingly laid to rest. In the NFL, the days of the dynasty are as strong as they’ve ever been. The Kansas City Chiefs are the undisputed, defining dynasty of not just football, but the American sports world as a whole in the 2020s. They’ve appeared in five of the last six Super Bowls, won three of those, and came the closest any NFL team has to a Super Bowl threepeat - close, but not close enough.
The Kansas City Chiefs are undoubtedly a dynasty, but it was only a few short years ago when people were debating giving them such a moniker. Were the Chiefs a dynasty when they appeared in back-to-back Super Bowls in 2019 and 2020? Did they only become one when they won a second championship in four years in 2022? It's only when one asks these questions that the realization that “dynasty” is an arbitrary title kicks in. What defines a dynasty in the NFL?
Some dynasties, like the reign of terror of New England for most of the last quarter century, are undeniable. From 2001 to 2019, the Brady-Belichick Patriots seemed to exist as the “final boss” of the NFL. To put into perspective how insane a length of time that is, imagine a child born in 2001, coming into a world where his parents are cursing the name of New England for beating their beloved team. That child grows up, learns to walk and read, goes to school, graduates, registers to vote, is now a legal adult, and turns on the TV to see the same team, QB, and coach from the date of his birth beating his beloved team.
Depending on how one measures a dynasty, should we consider that length of time as one continuous dynasty? With the exceptions of Brady and Belichick, the New England Patriots were a completely different team in 2001 vs 2019, a Team of Theseus rather than a ship. If only the quarterback and coach matter, does that mean that the era of Steve Young and George Seifert, with their 1994 season Super Bowl win, is completely removed from the 49ers dynasty capped off by Joe Montana and Bill Walsh’s Super Bowl win in 1988? Where do you put the Niners’ title win with Montana and Seifert at the end of the 1989 season?
If a lot of championships in a short amount of time are all that matters, should we split the infamous Patriots dynasty in half? After the Pats won three Super Bowls in four years from 2001 to 2004, they wouldn’t win another Super Bowl for a full decade. After finally taking the Lombardi trophy back to Massachusetts in 2014, the Brady-Belichick Patriots would win two more in the next four years. Even though they appeared in the Super Bowl twice between the 2004 and 2014 wins, is a decade too long between victories to be considered part of the same, unbroken dynasty?
How many championships does a team need to be a dynasty, and how close together do they need to be? Back-to-back Super Bowl wins are a rarity in the history of the league, and the aforementioned Patriots were the last team to accomplish such a feat before the modern-day Chiefs. While the early 2000s Pats and 2020s Chiefs are considered to clearly be dynasties, should we count the 1997-1998 Broncos under John Elway as a dynasty? Two seasons before their first Super Bowl victory, those Broncos didn’t even make the playoffs, just as they failed to make the playoffs the season after their second title win. However, for that two-season stretch, they climbed the mountaintop not once, but twice in a row.
If being a dynasty is more than raking up multiple championships in a short amount of time, do Mike Tomlin’s Steelers deserve to be looked on as a dynasty in their own right? Since becoming Pittsburgh’s head coach in 2007, Mike Tomlin has never once had a losing season, even going to the Super Bowl twice in four years, winning. While they haven’t been back to the Super Bowl in 15 years, with some years of mediocrity mixed in, the idea of a team never being bad once in almost two full decades seems dynastic in its own right. Where does the longevity of success rank against the caliber of success?
What about those teams that won their conference title multiple times, but just couldn’t cross the finish line in the Super Bowl? From 1990-1994, the Jim Kelly-led Buffalo Bills were the undisputed top dogs of the AFC, winning four consecutive AFC Championships and becoming the only NFL team ever to appear in four consecutive Super Bowls. However, all anyone talks about is their consecutive Super Bowl losses. Shouldn’t their dominance over an entire conference and their back-to-back-to-back-to-back AFC titles, championships in their own right, be celebrated as a proper dynasty?
How about teams that dominated the regular season and were seen as consistent title contenders for years on end? The Indianapolis Colts under Peyton Manning went seven straight years winning 12 or more regular season games from 2003 to 2009. During that stretch, they “only” appeared in two Super Bowls, winning one. Meanwhile, Manning was selected as NFL MVP an unbelievable four times in that seven-year stretch of time. How could anyone say that the Manning Colts weren’t a proper dynasty with a straight face?
The quest to answer the question of what makes a dynasty just brings out even more questions. The truth is, it might be impossible to clearly define what makes a dynasty in the NFL without leaving out some extremely successful and noteworthy teams. In a world where football gets more and more precise and analytical, it seems such an important term is ironically left up to the subjective, arbitrary whims of whoever discusses it. Maybe defining “dynasty” in sports is like trying to define “obscenity” in the Supreme Court: impossible to put into words, but you’ll know it when you see it.
