Let’s address the elephant in the room. The Chiefs are in the Super Bowl again. But, who are they playing? What new and exciting challenger has arrived to take down the big bad Mahomes? The Eagles… Again.

With the redundancy of the biggest game of the year, many fans are wondering if this will be the new norm. The same teams in the Super Bowl every year can get very old. After all, the Chiefs have played in five of the last six Super Bowls and Kansas City and Philadelphia have met in two of the last three, including Super Bowl LIX.

 However, despite the seeming monotony of the Super Bowl, the future of the NFL has never been brighter and another Chiefs Super Bowl could be the end of an era.

Think about it. The Lions and Commanders nearly made it to the Super Bowl this year and they might have if they didn’t play each other. Both have been dead franchises for a very long time, but now the Lions are the new big thing, and the Commanders, who won four games last year, almost made the championship game with a rookie quarterback.

Moreover, CJ Stroud has resurrected the Texans, Deion Sanders’s son is about to enter the league, likely in Las Vegas, and Travis Hunter is about to make a splash in the league as the most talented and highly-anticipated prospect in all of football.

Sam Darnold revived his career in Minnesota, no one knows what in the world Atlanta is going to do under center, and all the while college football is producing more stars than ever.

So, the year of the least anticipated Super Bowl may be giving way to one of the most anticipated eras in NFL history. One that may signal a changing of the guard. 

Might we see long-dead franchises like the Texans, Lions, and Commanders take the place of top Super Bowl contenders like the Chiefs, Ravens, and Bills? If this year is any indication the gap is getting smaller and next year it just might close.