Kansas City Chiefs | History & Notable Players - Britannica

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The first Super Bowl

The newly renamed Chiefs began playing in Kansas City’s Municipal Stadium when they arrived in 1963. The team would share the stadium with some of the city’s other sports franchises. The Chiefs returned to the middle of the AFL West standings, where they remained until 1966. That season they again won 11 games and captured the AFL title. The Chiefs were then a part of one of the most historic moments in American football history when they faced off against the Green Bay Packers in the first annual AFL-NFL World Championship Game—what Hunt later renamed the “Super Bowl.” The Chiefs, however, lost what came to be known as Super Bowl I by the score of 35–10.

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In 1969 the Chiefs featured the league’s leading defense—which starred future Hall of Famers Willie Lanier, Bobby Bell, and Buck Buchanan—and they once again won an AFL championship. That earned them a berth in the Super Bowl, where the Chiefs defeated the Minnesota Vikings in the final game ever played by an AFL franchise. (The two leagues merged in 1970.)

Kansas City made another playoff appearance in 1971, and in 1972 the team moved to its new stadium, called Arrowhead Stadium. But the Chiefs then posted losing records in 9 of the 14 seasons between 1972 and 1985, and they missed the postseason in each of those years.

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