Ken Norton Jr. is lone player to three-peat at Super Bowl. Will Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce join him?
How is it that Ken Norton Jr. has skin in Super Bowl LIX? The former UCLA and NFL Hall of Fame linebacker and longtime NFL and college assistant coach has zero ties to the Kansas City Chiefs or Philadelphia Eagles.
But Norton holds the distinction of being the only NFL player to win three consecutive Super Bowls, starring for the Dallas Cowboys in 1993 and 1994 thumpings of the Buffalo Bills and for the San Francisco 49ers in their one-sided win over the San Diego Chargers in 1995.
The Chiefs are attempting to become the first team to win three Super Bowls in a row after defeating the Eagles in 2023 and the 49ers last year. So any Chiefs player on the roster for a third consecutive season would tie Norton's record with a victory Sunday in New Orleans.
That would include the megastars in quarterback Patrick Mahomes, tight end Travis Kelce and defensive end Chris Jones, among others.
Winning three in a row didn't seem so exceptional to Norton when he accomplished it. He was jubilant after his third Super Bowl title, feeling like he might continue winning forever.
“I can’t tell you how wonderful I feel,” he told The Times after Super Bowl XXIX. “I’ve got five fingers, so why stop at three?”
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He did win another Super Bowl ring in 2014 as a member of the Seattle Seahawks coaching staff in a dominant 43-8 win over the Denver Broncos. He also won a college national championship as an assistant coach at USC in 2009 and nearly advanced to this year's Super Bowl as an assistant with the Washington Commanders.
Norton became attuned to wins and losses at an early age as the son of heavyweight champion boxer Ken Norton Sr.
"All through the school life, if he won a fight, I was everybody's friend and everybody wanted to know who I was," Norton Jr. told ESPN in 2021. "But if he got knocked out or lost a fight, it was, 'I hate that guy. Your dad sucks.' Early on, going through grade school, your identity is kind of caught up in the wins and losses and your friends and things like that, so it becomes pretty tough.
"And it's everybody. It's the principal, it's the teachers, it's the kids that turn their back on you when it's a loss and they're hugging you when it's a win. It's a pretty strange way to go through it."
Norton Sr. is remembered mostly for breaking the jaw of Muhammad Ali in a stunning upset in 1973 when his son was 7 years old. His career was bittersweet after two close losses to Ali — including a controversial decision in the rubber match — and a WBC title match loss to Larry Holmes in 1977 at Caesars Palace that Norton Jr. watched on television.
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The 15th and final round was epic, with Norton Sr. and Holmes repeatedly pounding each other. Holmes won in a split decision to take Norton Sr.'s title. Norton Sr. had never allowed his son to watch him box, but witnessing his father's courage on TV "was a turning point for me as a young man," Norton Jr. told ESPN.
"I was searching for an identity and I found who I was by watching him fight that 15th round. It was a war. It's one of the best rounds of all time. That round really showed me who he was and ... it really made me understand the type of person I am and I have to be as I go into trying to make my way in life as far as my attitude, how I'm going to approach it, who I'm going to be and what my values are going to be."
Norton Jr. grew up in Southern California, starred at Westchester High as a running back and linebacker and helped UCLA to four consecutive bowl victories from 1985-1988. He blossomed with the Cowboys after moving to middle linebacker in 1991, leading the team in tackles the following year in a season that culminated in a Super Bowl win, Norton Jr.'s first.
The third came with San Francisco, with whom he played the last seven years of his career. Then came a decorated next act as an assistant coach under Pete Carroll at USC and with the Seahawks, followed by stints with the Raiders, Seahawks (again) and a return to UCLA in 2022-2023 before leaving for the Commanders.
Norton Jr.'s career has been studded by showers of victories at nearly every turn. His signature accomplishment is winning three Super Bowl rings in a row, an accomplishment he might soon share with a host of Chiefs.
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Mahomes, for one, is looking forward to the opportunity.
“It’ll be something I’ll look back at the end of my career, if we’re able to go out there and get that three-peat,” Mahomes said, "but at the same time, you just treat it as one season and one Super Bowl run, which is always hard to do.”
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
