The Kansas City Chiefs and the NFL’s Illusion of Parity

The NFL Insists that every team has a chance to win every year. A notion that is being challenged by the Kansas City Chiefs and leaving us to wonder if dynasties are such a bad thing

Many football fans will tell you that what makes the NFL great is that it has parity, that it is a league where any given Sunday a team can win and any given year a team can make a run and win it all. In the context of making the playoffs after a disappointing season the year prior it is absolutely accurate. We saw that play out this season with both the Detroit Lions and Houston Texans. But as Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs won their third Super Bowl in the last five years, one has to wonder if that parity does not apply to the teams that win championships.

In the AFC in particular, we have seen a small handful of teams reach the mountain top as opposed to the abundance that a league filled with parity would provide. Despite the league’s best efforts to convince us that any team can dominate in a given year, it is a select number of teams with elite quarterbacks that dominate the landscape. In the AFC we have seen a transfer of power from Tom Brady to Patrick Mahomes and it doesn’t appear to be changing any time soon. The question becomes if dynasties are a bad thing in the context of the NFL.