Cats may have nine lives, but playoff aspirants in the NFL only have eight, and Kansas City has already used up four of them.
As the final seconds of Sunday’s game against the Buffalo Bills ticked away and a last-ditch Hail Mary heave fell incomplete, a thought entered my head. It was an unpleasant thought based on an idea I hadn’t given any real consideration to yet, despite Kansas City’s slow start to the season. But after an underwhelming loss to Buffalo, it’s something that feels like a genuine possibility.
The Chiefs could miss the playoffs this season.
It’s been a long time since that felt like something that might actually happen. The Chiefs haven’t missed the playoffs since the 2014 season, and for a decade, reaching the postseason has felt like a foregone conclusion. But after the weekend’s 28-21 loss to the Bills and given the way the Chiefs have played at times this season—plus the road ahead—that might not be the case this year.
To be clear, the sky is not falling. The Chiefs are not doomed. But after a lackluster 5-4 start, it’s time to talk seriously about the real possibility that this team might miss the playoffs.
Flat-track bullies
Bill Parcells once said, “You are what your record says you are.” For the Chiefs, that means they are a mediocre football team that has beaten up on weaker opponents but failed against fellow Super Bowl contenders.
They are flat-track bullies.
Of their five wins, only one has come against a team currently in a playoff spot—Week 6’s 30-17 win over Detroit. Even that win comes with a small asterisk, given how depleted Detroit’s secondary was. KC’s other wins were over the Russell Wilson–led New York Giants, a Lamar Jackson-less and injured Baltimore Ravens team, the Washington Commanders without Jayden Daniels, and the all-around hopeless Las Vegas Raiders.
How much value can you put on those wins? Not much, especially given the Chiefs have struggled against top competition. KC is 0-4 against legitimate contenders, having lost to the Chargers, Eagles, Jaguars, and Bills.
The first two losses were underwhelming: early-season defeats you could chalk up to rust, a lack of cohesion, and a couple of missing players. But the losses to Jacksonville and Buffalo were far more concerning. The Chiefs have looked at their worst when the lights have been brightest, and that’s a problem. They’ve fallen behind and still need to prove they can win big games against other strong teams in Denver, Indianapolis, and against the Chargers.
Of course, we know how good this Chiefs team can be, but we haven’t seen it yet. They need to turn things around, and fast.
The rundown
It’s as simple as this: if the season ended today, Kansas City would not be in the playoffs. Normally, that would just be a cliché. But we’re more than halfway through the season now, and the current standings are starting to matter.
At some stage, you need to have a spot inside the playoff picture, and the Chiefs face an uphill battle to get there. It looks like the No. 1 seed is out of reach. The Chiefs are two games behind the Indianapolis Colts and New England Patriots, the latter of whom have the easiest remaining schedule in the NFL (.358 strength of schedule). The Colts may have lost in Week 9, but they still hold the best record in the NFL and got a massive boost defensively at the trade deadline by adding Sauce Gardner.
KC is also, at best, two games behind the Bills—one loss and a tiebreaker—a team that has the fifth-easiest run home (.467 SOS) in front of them. They’re third in their division behind the Chargers and Broncos, both of whom have improved from last season and are proving less prone to inexplicable losses than before.
The Chiefs will have a chance to make up ground against both those teams—they play LA once more and Denver twice. But the Chargers have already bested them once, and have the Chiefs shown enough to make you think they should be favored in both games against a feisty Denver team? It’s no sure thing.
So how can things shape up? If Kansas City can go 2-2 in those four games against the Colts, Chargers, and Broncos—a run of form markedly better than what they’ve shown against other top teams so far—and win out against Houston, Dallas, Tennessee, and Las Vegas, they’d end the season at 11-6, which was good enough for a Wild Card spot last postseason.
But if the Chiefs go 1-3 in that four-game stretch or drop one of the easier games, their record would slip to 10-7, putting them on the cusp of missing the playoffs. Any more than three losses the rest of the way would almost certainly guarantee they finish outside the postseason. There is very little room for error.
Cats may have nine lives, but playoff aspirants in the NFL only have eight, and Kansas City has already used up four of them.
The good news for the Chiefs
Amid a heavy dose of realism, there’s still plenty of room for optimism. The sky is not falling—yet.
The Chiefs might currently sit outside the AFC playoff picture as the eighth seed, but NFL Next Gen Stats still gives Kansas City a 71 percent chance of making the postseason. That’s actually a higher percentage than three teams currently holding a playoff spot—the Chargers (70 percent), Pittsburgh (60 percent), and Jacksonville (52 percent).
That’s reassuring, and the news only gets better. The Chiefs still have the highest chance of winning the Super Bowl out of any team in the NFL, according to ESPN analytics. That model suggests Kansas City has an 11.1 percent chance of hoisting the Lombardi Trophy—an insanely high figure for a team that, more than halfway through the season, isn’t currently in a playoff spot.
