Martin Rogers
FOX Sports Insider
It was only four years ago that the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers met in the Super Bowl, but if you feel like that game belongs to a different era, you’re not the only one.
The Chiefs and Niners booked their respective passages to the Feb. 11 Las Vegas showdown on Sunday to secure a rematch of the February 2020 Super Bowl LIV in Miami Gardens, Fla., which, of course, turned out to be the last major sporting event before everything changed.
In football terms, however, two things remain as real and present as they did then.
When they are in form and in their unmistakable flow, Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs’ unapologetic, relentless offense add up to a problem for which there may be no true answer.
And while the 49ers, especially head coach Kyle Shanahan, have successfully answered virtually every question and have built a buoyant modern success story, there is one vital query lingering: Can they get over the line in the biggest game of all?
The way things transpired over the weekend, with Mahomes & Co. too composed and too strong for an error-strewn Baltimore Ravens outfit, and the Niners able to solve the puzzle posed by the courageous Detroit Lions, forces us by default to look back on 2020, a period that felt surreal at the time and is perhaps even more so in reflection.
Whereas the buildup to Super Bowl LIV was overshadowed by the tragic death of Kobe Bryant (and eight others, including his daughter Gianna) in a helicopter disaster a week earlier, it would soon be followed by the ravages of the COVID-19 outbreak, which had such a devastating and chaotic effect on life as we knew it.
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Within five weeks of the Chiefs hoisting the Vince Lombardi Trophy, all major sports had shut down. The NCAA basketball tournaments had been canceled, the NBA locked its doors…
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Publish date : 2024-01-29 18:32:47
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