The Kansas City Chiefs had struggled all night to pick up their fizzling offense, and fans who had watched their defense let them down for years looked as if they were going to rue its performance once more on the game's biggest stage.
That's when new coordinator Steve Spagnuolo's defense penned a different ending to the script. The Chiefs forced the San Francisco 49ers into a pair of punts in the fourth quarter, when they were facing a double-digit deficit for the third straight game, and that gave Patrick Mahomes and Co. a chance to rally for a 31-20 victory — the first championship for the long-suffering franchise in 50 years.