KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Chiefs spent 728 days as Super Bowl champions, and this, after bridging more than 18,000 between Lombardi Trophies.

A long climb.

And then a long stay at the top.

But as of last Sunday, around, oh, 9:17 p.m. Central Time, the Chiefs stepped into an old role.

The hunters.

No longer the target.

There will be plenty of time to analyze what’s next for the Chiefs. We’ve certainly already started that process here at The Kansas City Star, with looming questions about the future for star tight end Travis Kelce, the plan at left tackle and the team’s free-agency blueprint.

All relevant. But I wanted to step back for a moment and put into context just how spectacular this three-year run was — because it’s been swallowed up in the rather unspectacular conclusion.

And I get that, too. I’m not here to offer solace or butter up the conclusion. It stunk. They stunk. This would be a noteworthy piece, win or lose, which is kind of the point.

Those 728 days as Super Bowl champions comprises the longest reign in NFL history. The late-‘80s San Francisco 49ers matched that number exactly, but literally nobody in history could call themselves defending champions for longer than the Chiefs just did.

Remarkable, is it not?

Whatever is next, whatever changes might be coming, that’s a reality that can never be changed.

The future Chiefs will still employ Patrick Mahomes at quarterback and Andy Reid as head coach. It’s a good place to start. This summer will likely provide a shakeup around them, maybe the largest we’ve seen (in terms of actual numbers) in the Mahomes Era. The salary cap necessitates it. So does the final result in New Orleans.

But that speaks to an element of Kansas City’s three-year run that only enhances how exceptional it’s been.

Change.

The streak started the very year the Chiefs traded Tyreek Hill, one of the league’s top talents, a move that prompted their season projections to plummet in the betting market. They were given a better chance of finally ceding the AFC West to a division rival than prolonging their streak of winning it.

They’d breeze to that title, and then a Super Bowl, without him, and then they’d win another.

It started with Kelce in the final years of his prime, and now, today, we’re wondering how much Kelce has left to give, and whether he will determine that answer is nothing left at all.

It started with the No. 1 offense in the NFL residing in Kansas City and concluded with relatively mediocre production offensively. But the Chiefs built a defense that not only contributed but outright carried them for stretches of the season.

It started with players who are not only gone from Kansas City now, but several who are out of the NFL altogether. The turnover wasn’t just Hill. Only 12 players who started Sunday’s blowout loss to the Eagles also started on offense or defense in the game two years earlier. They’d turned over more than half the overall roster in just two years.

The streak has been defined by an organizational ability to shift, all the while not disrupting a foremost consistency:

They kept winning.

More than anyone.

The Chiefs won 49 games over the past three seasons, playoffs included, the most of any NFL team over a three-year stretch in league history.

They have more playoff wins in the last three years alone than quarterback Eli Manning, a two-time Super Bowl champion, did in his entire career. They totaled more wins, regular season and playoffs combined, in three years than Cincinnati’s Joe Burrow — a consensus top-five quarterback in the league — had in the last five years combined.

The Chiefs didn’t amaze us on an every-game basis, not really, anyway. This year was hard, man. The injuries. The aging superstar. Everybody’s best shot is a real thing. For the last year-plus, it was more whew! than wow!

You could get lost in the weeds of coming out on the right side of 17 consecutive one-possession games, because they weren’t dominant. I know I did.

But the end result was that a franchise better known for its playoff heartbreak just a decade ago provided the best three-year stretch of football, by a single team, that the NFL has seen.

Ever.

Years from now, this group will rank up there in NFL history with the all-time bests — with the ‘70s Steelers, the ‘80s ‘Niners, the ‘90s Cowboys and the ‘00s Patriots. That’s how it ought to be viewed, once the pain of a miserable Super Bowl Sunday has worn off, or at least lost its edge.

The best. And perhaps the unlikeliest.

The Chiefs’ implied odds to complete their particular three-year run from start to finish — Super Bowl win, Super Bowl win, Super Bowl appearance — were about 1 in 570. And that’s not pulling a random team from a hat. It takes into account that this team had that quarterback and that head coach and that tight end.

And the models still spit out just 1 in 570.

But they weren’t 1 of 1.

They couldn’t win the last one, the potential first three-peat in the Super Bowl era, and that certainly changes this conversation. None of you — not one — would have an argument against the Chiefs having completed the best three-year streak in NFL history had they won Sunday.

They didn’t. And it wasn’t close. They got their doors blown off.

The structure of the NFL is specifically designed to prevent what the Chiefs just accomplished, same as it will certainly alter what’s next.

And in some ways, it kind of already did. The Chiefs became the first team to win with their quarterback occupying more than 13% of the salary cap.

They did it in 2023.

They did it again in 2024.

They aren’t the same team. Mahomes isn’t the same quarterback. He and the team’s offensive coaches had to reinvent themselves. (They did a better job of that in the past than they did in 2024. I say that after the starters went 15-1 and reached another Super Bowl.)

Maybe that speaks best to the past three years.

The Chiefs prompted us — forced us, asked us — to grade them on a Super Bowl curve. We obliged.

How many teams in the NFL this season were truly Super Bowl or bust? That’s a compliment — even if the year concluded with the bust.

That bust shouldn’t change the best.

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