49ers battle the Chiefs for Super Bowl 2024

By Greg Buchanan

We’re all set for Super Bowl 2024, with the matchup now set between the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs this Sunday in Vegas.

Both teams booked their berth with Championship Round wins that were dramatic and impressive in their own ways.

What it all boils down to is that the Chiefs are in their fourth Super Bowl in five years, while the 49ers are back in the big time for the first time since losing 31-20 to Mahomes and Co. in Super Bowl 54 in 2020.

The San Francisco 49ers have been the NFC’s most successful franchise this decade and are heading to their eighth Super Bowl, looking for their first win since the mid-1990s.

With one of the best offensive coaches in the NFL in Kyle Shanahan, an arsenal of potential lethal weaponry, and Brock Purdy having vaulted himself into the discussion as a quarterback worthy of more attention, the 49ers are touted by sportsbooks as the slimmest of slim favourites to take the glory.

To do so, they’ll need to put recent history behind them.

The Niners have reached the NFL Championship Round seven times since 2011 without converting any deep postseason runs into a Super Bowl title. It’s been 29 years since they last got their hands on the Lombardi Trophy, but you can see why their chances are good.

Arguably, no team in the NFL has a vaster and deeper array of stars, with a league-high nine Pro Bowlers and seven players who earned first or second-team All-Pro honours. Their roster is also replete with past Super Bowl experience, and they’ve swept aside almost everything before them this season, winning their 12 regular-season games by a second-best average of 19 points.

The biggest problem for San Francisco — and the biggest impediment to them winning it all — is their opponent.

KC beat the Niners in San Fran’s last Super Bowl appearance four years ago, when Mahomes had three touchdowns, and the last time these two teams met in October 2022, the Chiefs won by three touchdowns. The Niners have never beaten Mahomes-era KC.

And if the Chiefs have proven one thing in recent months — other than the fact that Taylor Swift is the biggest new NFL star — it’s that you can never, ever count them out. This KC side was labelled underwhelming and inconsistent earlier this season; now, the Chiefs are at the Super Bowl again after flexing its championship muscles this postseason and on the road to boot.

Winning back-to-back Super Bowls is incredibly difficult, with the Patriots the last team to do it two decades ago. But Mahomes will be the youngest quarterback ever to start four Super Bowls, and coach Andy Reid is now behind only Bill Belichick and Don Shula in SB appearances.

They may be rated as razor-thin underdogs, but bet against them at your own risk.