The Kansas City and San Francisco 49ers are going head-to-head in the Super Bowl for the second time in six years on Sunday in Super Bowl LVIII. Kansas City is eyeing a third Lombardi trophy in as many seasons, while San Fran is looking to join the Pittsburgh Steelers and New England Patriots as the third NFL franchise to win six Super Bowl titles in their franchise’s history.
While these two teams are foes that stand in one another way from reaching football immortality this weekend, the Chiefs and 49ers are two proud franchises that are part of some historic moments in NFL history. Here are some interesting facts that connect Kansas City and San Francisco.
The 49ers logo inspired Lamar Hunt.
Before they became the Chiefs, Lamar Hunt’s AFL franchise played in Dallas as the Texans for three seasons from 1960-1962. Despite winning the AFL Championship game in ’62, the Texans weren’t reeling in the revenue they were expecting, due to sharing the Dallas market with the Cowboys, who joined the NFL as an expansion franchise the same year the Texans began their inaugural season in 1960.
After deciding on Kansas City as the future home city for his franchise going into the 1963 season, Hunt began working on rebranding his team and eventually decided on the Chiefs nickname in honor of former Kansas City mayor H. Roe Bartle, who was instrumental in attracting Hunt’s attention to move the Texans in the midwest. When trying to draft a new logo for the Chiefs, Hunt took inspiration from the 49ers’ inter-locking ‘SF’ and wanted to incorporate the same look into the emblem for his franchise.
As the story goes per CEO and Chairman Clark Hunt – Lamar Hunt’s son – while Lamar was sitting in a Kansas City diner, he sketched an arrowhead with an inter-locking ‘KC’ design in block-letter font on a napkin. That design would go on to the official emblem of the Kansas City Chiefs and probably wouldn’t have been if not for the 49ers’ logo inspiring Hunt in the first place.
The first matchup between the Chiefs and the 49ers occurred in 1971.
After the 1970 AFL-NFL merger that allowed former AFL and NFL franchises to play one another, Kansas City and San Francisco would meet for the first time on December 6, 1971. Hank Stram’s Chiefs traveled to old Candlestick Park to play a 49ers squad led by quarterback John Brodie. On that day, Kansas City clobbered the Niners, 26-17, as wide receiver Otis Taylor finished with two touchdowns on the day.
It was the first and last time the Chiefs were victorious over San Fran, as Kansas City lost the next four meetings until the Montana vs. Young game in 1994.
The Chiefs are 7-7 all-time against the 49ers.
San Francisco is a quarterback pipeline for Kansas City.
Before the Patrick Mahomes era began in 2018, the Chiefs were notorious for finding QBs that essentially other club’s hand-me-downs. Even the other Super Bowl champion quarterback, Len Dawson, played for two other franchises before signing with the Chiefs/Texans in 1962.
But no franchise that handed the Chiefs more quarterbacks than the 49ers. In total, six former 49ers quarterbacks have left the bay to join the Chiefs. Those signal callers are Steve DeBerg, Joe Montana, Steve Bono, Elvis Grbac, Alex Smith, and Blaine Gabbert.
DeBerg might be the exception because he was technically traded to the Chiefs from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1988. He makes the list because he began his career with the 49ers eight seasons earlier. The rest, however, were directly from the bay. Montana joined the Chiefs in 1993 after spending 13 seasons and winning four Super Bowls for San Fran. Joe “Cool” was heralded for a long time after his two seasons in KC ended because he was the last Chiefs QB to win in the postseason until another former Niners QB ended the streak in 2015.
Steve Bono and Elvis Grbac followed one another in their respective careers. Before Montana retired following the 1994 season, Kansas City went to the 49ers again and acquired Steve Bono via trade. San Fran would replace Bono with Elvis Grbac, who the team drafted in ’93.
Bono became the Chiefs’ starter under center in 1995, but after two seasons that ended horrifically in the playoffs, Kansas City moved on from Bono and signed Grbac as a free agent in 1997. He remained the starting QB for Kansas City until 2000.
Alex Smith was the next former Niner-turned-Chief. He spent six bumpy seasons with San Francisco from 2005-2010 before Jim Harbaugh helped turn his career around in 2011. In 2013, he was traded to Kansas City and joined Andy Reid, where he played five seasons with the Chiefs before being replaced by a young quarterback from Texas Tech, and the rest is history.
Most recently, the Chiefs signed former 49ers backup QB Blaine Gabbert last offseason to replace Chad Henne to backup Patrick Mahomes.
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