No team in the Super Bowl era -- including the Bill Belichick-Tom Brady Patriots -- has ever won three straight championships, but that didn't stop Colts owner Jim Irsay from setting back-to-back-to-back championships as his team's goal moving forward. 

At the NFL league meetings last week, Irsay couldn't help but give his team an incredibly ambitious goal that they will almost certainly fall well short of -- and that's not a criticism of the Colts, a very good football team with a bright future. It's the reality of football. Winning one Super Bowl is hard enough. Winning three in a row is close to impossible.

Here's what Irsay had to say, via the Indianapolis Star's Zak Keefer:

"I really feel like this is a young team that's ascending," he said at the league meetings last week.

A few minutes later, he took it further: "You guys know, I will unabashedly say, I'd like to win three in a row. How hard is it? I mean, it's hard as hell just to win one."

He's right about the first part. The Colts have already ascended since Chris Ballard took over as general manager, Frank Reich was hired as head coach, and Andrew Luck returned from injury. This past season, the Colts went 10-6 to secure a playoff berth. Most importantly, Luck looked completely healthy in his return from a shoulder injury that forced him to miss the entire 2017 season and younger players like Quenton Nelson and Darius Leonard already looked like superstars. The Colts are a good football team with an elite quarterback and great young talent. 

But that doesn't mean they're a lock to become the next Patriots -- or, rather, an even better version of the Patriots. For one, they're stuck in the AFC and it's not like the Patriots are going anywhere. The Patriots might not have won three Super Bowls in a row, but they have gone to three straight Super Bowls. Then there's the fact that Patrick Mahomes already looks like the best quarterback on the planet and he plays for a Chiefs team that also resides in the AFC. The point being, the Colts will have plenty of competition in the battle for supremacy in the conference.

Keep in mind: The Colts had Peyton Manning for 14 seasons. And they only won one Super Bowl.