What counts as a dynasty? Sure, it takes more than one championship, something only four NFL teams have done in the last two decades: New England, Baltimore, the Giants and Pittsburgh. But most of us would agree that qualifying as a dynasty takes at least three rings in a relatively compact period of time, which is why it is so difficult to do. In a time frame when no other NFL team built a dynasty, the Patriots essentially had two: 2001-04 and 2014-18. But you may have heard that Tom Brady switched teams this offseason, which filled the NFL with a host of new opportunities … allegedly. MMQB colleague Conor Orr last week wrote a list of the dozens of teams that are the only realistic Super Bowl LV applicants, and today we follow that up with an even shorter list of franchises that have what some might call dynasty potential . The list is probably even shorter than the six we identify here, but let’s just say we keep an open mind (instead of acknowledging that a list does not really work with just one or two items).
1. Kansas City Chiefs
It’s about the QB and the coach, but it’s also about the money. Patrick Mahomes set a tone with his 10-year contract extension earlier this summer: What was important to him, in his own words, was “a dynasty hunt.” This approach put the Chiefs, who had as little as $ 177 in salary cap space one Monday in March, signing Mahomes, Chris Jones and Travis Kelce for expansions in recent weeks. NFL Network’s Mike Garafolo, a friend of The MMQB’s, reported that those three contract extensions only added $ 8 million to the team’s payment traffic in 2020. Of course, team-friendly contracts, specifically Brady’s willingness to take them, were one factor in ‘ the dynasty of New England team building. Mahomes has taken a similar approach. He committed himself to KC through 2031 instead of insisting on a short-term deal that would allow him to re-invest in what the new top of the market nails after a few years, following the influx of money out new TV deals and legalized gambling. There are many factors that go into any negotiation, and it’s clear that one big factor for Mahomes was the kind of supportive cast to keep that allowed him to add more rings.
2. Baltimore Ravens
Lamar Jackson and the Ravens are first focused on overcoming the bump of winning a playoff game together. But nothing about the season Jackson had, as the Ravens’ promise to build a paradigm-shifting crime around him, suggests it was a fluke. The Ravens were not afraid to make Jackson the center of both their passing and running attacks, and the shifts inherent in Jackson’s game raise questions about the sustainability of the long-term approach. In addition to Jackson’s ability, security Earl Thomas pointed out in January that the Ravens’ respected grid building approach gave him confidence that they would build the next iteration of a winner’s organization (this move did not happen when Thomas speaks, but Baltimore’s trade a choice for the fifth round for Calais Campbell certainly falls into that category). “I do not want to get too far for myself, but just take time to step back, I feel like they are bringing the core people together right now,” Thomas said at the time. “I know what it looks like and I did not recognize it in Seattle at first. So, to go through it a second time, I understand it now. ”
3. San Francisco 49ers
There were some eyebrows raised around the league when Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch received six-year deals in 2017 after a series of misses for the organization. But they got this hire right, rewarding both with long-term contract extensions on the heels of last season’s trip to Super Bowl LIV. A strong working relationship between the coach and the GM is essential to the long-term success of an organization, and part of the reason the partnership has worked so far was their dedicated work to ensure they are on the same page. Before Shanahan and Lynch’s first draft, in 2017, they worked with a Stanford professor, Burke Robinson, to put together a vision statement, along with other key members of the organization. They intended to use the vision statement just for that concept, but their toes of team building dictated that spring has become a permanent part of the 49ers ethos. At the bottom of that first vision statement was a graph representing the team of five Super Bowl trophies, representing their ultimate vision of rebuilding the team’s dynasty. Seeing how the 49ers, and Jimmy Garoppolo in particular, handcuffed last season’s heartbreaking loss in Super Bowl LIV, will be a critical checkpoint in the pursuit of that goal.
4. New England Patriots… yet?
Orr ranks of the Patriots no. 2 on his list of Super Bowl LV fans, and I’ll make a backup of my Weak-Side Pod host if not pronounce the New England dynasty until it’s really over. And 2020 – when Cam Newton joined the mid-pandemic and eight Patriots voted out – may not be the season that answers our questions. Bill Belichick always has a plan, even if it is not immediately or immediately clear. For two decades, Brady was a big piece of that plan, but he was not the only piece. Let’s see how the next two years develop before we begin to apply T. Swift’s last melodic luster to the crumbs of another great American dynasty in New England.
5. Who draws Trevor Lawrence
This item is the brainstorm of MMQB senior editor Gary Gramling, and with good reason. To give you an idea of how eager NFL talent evaluators awaited Lawrence’s arrival, the Clemson QB was the answer given by one well-respected GM to the MMQB’s anonymous question in the spring of 2019. : Could every college footballer go one? and done in the NFL? “If he came out, he would be the first choice in draft this year,” the GM said then, months after Lawrence’s true freshman season ended with a national title. Only one other QB got a vote in that interview – Peyton Manning – which is the rare company Lawrence is in.
6. None
This is truly the most likely of all options. Remember all the other dynamic dynasties we’ve seen in the NFL? The mid-2010s Seahawks, foil on goal line by Malcolm Butler. The Giants of the late 2000s, kidnapped by night from Plaxico Burress in the Latin Quarter. Even the Patriots went a whole decade – with Belichick, Brady and perhaps the greatest team of all time in 2007 – without winning a ring. The Chiefs, who are currently feeling so unrelenting, sat in a 24-0 hole in the division round and kicked with 10 points midway through the fourth quarter of Super Bowl LIV. The margins on every play, game, or season are in the NFL razor-thin, making it exponentially harder to establish the dynasties we all like to speculate about.
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