San Francisco 49ers rally to beat Detroit Lions, set up Super Bowl showdown with Kansas City Chiefs
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Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce (left) holds the Lamar Hunt trophy after winning the AFC Championship football game.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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KANSAS – There’s no need to check your eyes if Super Bowl LVIII has a familiar look.
Just four years after the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers met in the big game, the two foes are back for a rematch in the Super Bowl on Feb 11 in Las Vegas.
San Francisco took a 10-point lead into the fourth quarter of that match in Miami Gardens, Florida, in 2020 before the Chiefs scored 21 points to claim a 31-20 victory.
Kansas City also won last season’s Super Bowl, 38-35 over the Philadelphia Eagles. The franchise are 3-2 in Super Bowls, the first win coming in Super Bowl IV to cap the 1969 season.
The Chiefs qualified for this season’s showpiece with a 17-10 road victory over the Baltimore Ravens on Jan 28. Now they will look to become the first franchise to win back-to-back Super Bowls since the New England Patriots in 2004 and 2005.
“Now we’re in the Super Bowl and the job’s not done,” Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes said. “We got to go out there to Vegas and play a great team and see if we can go out there and get the Super Bowl.”
Mahomes, a two-time Super Bowl Most Valuable Player, will be making his fourth Super Bowl start. The only quarterbacks with more starts are legends Tom Brady (10) and John Elway (five).
The 2020 loss to the Chiefs was the only time San Francisco made it to the Super Bowl under coach Kyle Shanahan.
But the lead got away – just like it did when the Atlanta Falcons blew a 25-point advantage with Shanahan as offensive coordinator during an epic meltdown in Super Bowl LI in 2017.
The 49ers were the top seeds in the National Football Conference this season and reached the Super Bowl with Jan 28’s comeback 34-31 win over the Detroit Lions in the conference championship.
The feeling is that it is time for this 49ers team to win the franchise’s sixth Super Bowl title, and first since 1995.
American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift (center) walks off the field after the Kansas City Chiefs won the AFC Championship football game.
PHOTO: REUTERS
“There’s been unfinished business for a while,” Shanahan said after the win over the Lions. “Our team has been set up for this for a long time. It’s been a long year to get to this point.”
While the Chiefs possess arguably the best quarterback in the game in Mahomes, who has a 14-3 career post-season record, the 49ers have seen Brock Purdy go from the last pick of the 2022 NFL Draft to one of the most relevant signal-callers in the game.
Purdy (24 years, 46 days) will be the third-youngest quarterback to start a Super Bowl and has given San Francisco stability at the position.
Both teams have celebrity fans, but only Kansas City have American pop star Taylor Swift, the girlfriend of Chiefs’ tight end Travis Kelce, cheering for them.
It won’t turn into Swift week leading up to the big game, though, as she has four straight concerts in Tokyo from Feb 7-10. REUTERS
