He stood in the winning locker room three years ago after a Super Bowl win in Hard Rock Stadium, dripping champagne and football wisdom, when someone asked him to look back at the decisions that won the night.

“I’m not good at looking back,’’ Kansas City Chiefs General Manager Brett Veach said that night in 2020. “I’d rather look ahead.”

Now comes a Super Bowl with two teams, Kansas City and Philadelphia, that looked ahead from one ring to the next in two distinct ways. These are franchises that don’t come to rent the trophy. They want to keep it.

Their two ways of climbing the mountain didn’t involve sacrificing seasons or losing for high draft picks — strategies used not just the Miami Dolphins but also by the teams they beat Sunday: Cincinnati and San Francisco. The Chiefs and Eagles are just better, smarter.

There are other, more visible themes to this Super Bowl. Kansas City coach Andy Reid plays the Philadelphia franchise that fired him a decade ago. Donna and Ed Kelce’s boys — Philadelphia’s Jason and Kansas City’s Travis — meet in the big game.

But the larger theme is how these teams keep winning, year after year. Kansas City has been in the AFC Championship Game five consecutive years, winning three to go to the Super Bowl. Philadelphia has made five playoffs and chases its second Super Bowl title in six years.

Kansas City’s success started when a faceless scout went to watch video of Texas Tech tackle before the 2016 draft. He was mesmerized instead by the team’s sophomore quarterback. He kept watching all the tape of him out there.

“What you watching?” Reid asked the scout one day.

“The next quarterback of the Chiefs’’ said the scout, Brett Veach.

Kansas City boldly traded from 27th to 10th to take that quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, in the 2017 draft. Veach was promoted to general manager by the time of Mahome’s second Super Bowl and first ring at Hard Rock.

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