There’s no doubt the 2019 Kansas City Chiefs were the best team in the NFL this past season. The question is whether the Super Bowl champs were one of the best teams to ever play.
That is always one of the questions that emerges after a championship. It’s especially one that comes when talking about a team that has spent the last few years dominating in one aspect or another. The Chiefs’ offense under Patrick Mahomes has been at or near the top of the league for years now. Still, Isaac Bruce, the famed wide receiver from the St. Louis Rams — a team referred to at the time as the “greatest show on turf” — believes his squad was better.
Speaking during an appearance at the National Football League’s Hall of Fame, Bruce explained it wasn’t just because his Rams team could light up the scoreboard. It was also the team’s defense and the overall physicality that made his group great.
It’s not that the Kansas City Chiefs’ players are soft, though. The former wide receiver was careful to put the focus for being a more physical team on the fact that rules have changed. Because of that, teams are practicing differently than they did when the “Greatest Show on Turf” was running over, around, and through opponents.
Bruce said the practices he sees from current NFL teams during the regular season seem more like what teams from his era were doing in the spring. That was the period of time when it was more important to start installing offenses and defenses, and for players to get to know each other. Hitting wasn’t something done all that much that early in the offseason.
“What we had, we went up against a totally different – guys were looking to take your head off. It was being promoted.”
While Bruce thinks the Rams’ defense would have been quite a bit better than what the Kansas City Chiefs have to offer, he’s plenty sure their offense — with the likes of Marshall Faulk and Kurt Warner — would have been a sight to see as well. As the Ramswire points out, the wide receiver doesn’t think it would be fair to other teams if they had to try and stop his squad with the rules currently in place.
He claims his teams had guys who weren’t “afraid to go across the middle” and run slants while being ready to get up and do it all over again on the very next play. It’s clear the Kansas City Chiefs’ offense has been a handful for the rest of the league, but they do run a different attack than what those old Rams teams did back in the day.