Somewhere, Eugene “Mercury” Morris is laughing with a glass of Champagne in his hand.
The running back, who died September 21 at age 77, was always one to celebrate when the last undefeated team in the NFL suffered their first loss of the season.
That meant Morris’ 1972 Miami Dolphins would remain the last to have a perfect campaign—14-0 in the regular season and three playoff wins on their way to the Super Bowl VII championship.
The Kansas City Chiefs’ bid for perfection ended with a 30-21 loss to Buffalo on Sunday in Orchard Park, N.Y.
“The undefeated thing was cool,” Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes said. “But that’s not our ultimate goal.”
The ultimate, of course, would be to become the first team to win three consecutive Super Bowls. Pittsburgh’s “Steel Curtain” teams of the 1970s never did it, nor did Joe Montana’s 49ers in the 1980s, the Cowboys of the early 1990s or Tom Brady’s Patriots in the 2000s.
The Chiefs (9-1 overall) had won 15 games in a row, including playoffs, since a December 25 loss to the Las Vegas Raiders.
But Kansas City had been flirting with disaster. Mahomes led four fourth-quarter comebacks this fall, and the Chiefs had to block a last-second field goal as time expired to beat visiting Denver 16-14 a week earlier.
Mahomes preferred to look on the bright side, that this loss could take some of the pressure off his team and let the Chiefs reach their full potential.
“I’m hoping that it is a benefit,” Mahomes said. “I feel like we were just coming away with these wins at the end of games. And I think it’s going to spark us to have more urgency, especially in the start of football games, especially with the offense.”
Kansas City coach Andy Reid pointed to last season’s Christmas Day defeat, which sparked the Chiefs to their third title in four years.
“That’s absolutely what we need this to be,” Reid said. “It needs to be something that we build off of. That’s something that we need. A reality check for us.”
On Sunday, Buffalo quarterback Josh Allen ran for a 26-yard touchdown on fourth and two with 2:17 left to provide the final margin. He was serenaded by chants of “M-V-P” from the Bills Mafia.
“Any time you give the ball back to Pat (Mahomes), that offense, down six with the game on the line, I like their odds in that situation,” Allen said of going for it on fourth down instead of settling for a field goal. “So wanting six or seven (points) to try to make it a two-score game.”
Allen evened his all-time record against Mahomes to 4-4. But all four of those wins—and one loss—have come during the regular season. In the playoffs, Mahomes has a 3-0 edge.
Which, in the case of the Chiefs, is all that really matters.
“It’s going to take your best football to beat great football teams. And we didn’t play our best football today,” Mahomes said. “All the respect to them. That’s going to be a good football team that we’ll probably see again.”
Morris’ Dolphins reached three straight Super Bowls from 1972 to 1974 but lost the first of them before winning two straight.
Mahomes and the Chiefs are still smiling, knowing they are still capable of having the last laugh for the third consecutive season.