By Scott Kacsmar
The Kansas City Chiefs are on top of the football world again after winning Super Bowl 57 against the Eagles. The Chiefs are the favorites to win the Super Bowl this year too (+600 at FanDuel), which would end the longest drought without a repeat champion in NFL history.
Since the 2003-04 Patriots became the last team to repeat, a handful of teams had higher odds than the 2023 Chiefs to repeat, but none of them pulled it off in the end. The 2013-14 Seattle Seahawks were the closest to doing so. But as the Chiefs reminded us last year, winning even one Super Bowl is very hard work, and sometimes it takes things not even in your control to help make it happen.
But the Chiefs are always going to have a championship shot if they have Patrick Mahomes, the best player in the NFL. He solidified the best 6-year start to a career in NFL history with his second MVP award and his second Super Bowl win and game MVP award. Only three other quarterbacks have won multiple Super Bowls and multiple league MVP awards, and it took Joe Montana (12 seasons), Tom Brady (11 seasons), and Peyton Manning (18 seasons) a lot more time to achieve that status.
Mahomes is also the favorite for his third MVP award this year, and the Chiefs are favored to win their 8th-straight division title, which would be the second-longest streak in NFL history. The over/under for Kansas City is 11.5 wins, tied for the highest total in the league. At a bare minimum, Mahomes has led the Chiefs to at least 12 wins and hosted an AFC Championship Game in each of his five years as a starter.
Expectations are super high this year, but where does a team go from having the No. 1 offense, No. 1 seed, MVP season at quarterback, and a Super Bowl win? This league is not designed for one team to stay on top of the mountain, so the Chiefs will have to dig in even deeper to hold off the competition if they want to repeat.
We look back at 2022’s Super Bowl journey in detail, the key offseason changes, how last year’s pitfalls may show up a year late, and the best Chiefs bets for 2023.
2022 Season Recap: The Title That Wasn’t Supposed to Be Until It Was
Kansas City fans are not going to like to hear this, but the 2022 season was never supposed to be a Super Bowl-winning season for this team:
- Not in the preseason when many predicted the Chiefs would take a step back without Tyreek Hill and with too many young defenders.
- Not after Week 6 when the Chiefs lost 24-20 at home to the Bills, who came into the season as Super Bowl favorites and into Kansas City as favorites in the game.
- Not when the Chiefs briefly took the lead in Super Bowl odds over Buffalo for the first time heading into Week 13, only to immediately lose another 3-point game to the Bengals, who were surging at the right moment.
- Not after earning the No. 1 seed with a 14-3 record, because Buffalo and Cincinnati, the teams affected by the Damar Hamlin situation canceling their game, were capable of going into Arrowhead and winning.
- Not when Patrick Mahomes suffered a high-ankle sprain in the first quarter in the divisional round against Jacksonville.
- Not when Mahomes aggravated his injury against the Bengals in the AFC Championship Game, and Joe Burrow had the ball in the final minute of a 20-20 game.
- Not when Mahomes had to play on that ankle against the favored Eagles and their vaunted pass rush that had 70 sacks in the regular season and allowed 14 points in the playoffs.
- Not when the Eagles were up 24-14 at halftime of Super Bowl 57 after Mahomes was visibly in pain and hobbled following another aggravation of his ankle sprain.
The moment when doubt finally changed to no doubt the Chiefs were winning this championship came with 1:48 left in the Super Bowl after a fortunate penalty was called on a third down.
But before we get to that point, let’s recap the wild ride for the Chiefs in 2022, a truly one-of-a-kind champion that should go down as a legacy definer for Mahomes, Andy Reid, Travis Kelce, and Chris Jones.
The Preseason Doubt
It was not unreasonable to think the Chiefs would take a step back in 2022. That still should have meant a playoff year with double-digit wins, but a Super Bowl was going to be harder given the changes on the Chiefs and around the AFC. There were new issues the team was going to have to face:
- The loss of Tyreek Hill and the questionable receiver-by-committee approach to replacing him.
- The lack of proven defenders around Chris Jones while teams like the Bills and Bengals looked stronger on defense than Kansas City.
- The AFC West looked incredibly strong on paper for a change after Denver traded for Russell Wilson, the Raiders hired Josh McDaniels and traded for Davante Adams, and the Chargers hoped to get some defensive help for Justin Herbert.
But through skill, execution, and some luck, the Chiefs worked past these issues to accomplish what they wanted to.
We’ll talk about the defense later, but regarding the AFC West race, that quickly became a massive letdown. Who could have imagined Russell Wilson would play that poorly for the lowest-scoring offense in the NFL? The Raiders (six) and Broncos (five) combined to blow 11 fourth-quarter leads, the most by any two teams last year. The Chargers had their only blown leads in the regular season come against the Chiefs in two prime-time showdowns that really could have gone either way as we detailed in their team preview this week.
The Chiefs were 6-0 in their division games, but that included a 5-0 record in games decided by fewer than 7 points. After Mahomes and Kelce led the comeback to beat the Chargers again in Week 11, the race was basically locked up before Thanksgiving. What a bummer for those teams.
The Offense Without Hill
One thing the Chiefs set out to prove immediately was that the offense would be just fine without Hill.
Sure, the offense was absolutely different without Hill, but it was better than it was in 2021, the season where Mahomes had an 8-game slump midway through the year. Mahomes’ drive engineering was as good as ever in 2022 as he got better at taking the easy throws and not trying to go bombs away on defenses without his best speed receiver. This is how you see Jerick McKinnon catch a touchdown in six straight games, an NFL record for a running back.
Mahomes already started doing this in 2021 after the 31-9 Super Bowl disaster against Tampa Bay’s two-deep safety looks. The Chiefs were also not going to let a simple wrinkle like a 3-man rush upend their season the way it did in the second half of the 2021 AFC Championship Game against Cincinnati. They fundamentally changed their offense to fit the talent remaining:
- In 2020, Mahomes had 12-of-38 touchdown passes travel at least 20 yards in the air (31.6%).
- In 2021, Mahomes had 7-of-37 touchdown passes travel at least 20 yards in the air (18.9%).
- In 2022, Mahomes had 1-of-41 touchdown passes travel at least 20 yards in the air (2.4%), and that one happened way back in Week 2 against the Chargers.
- In the 2022 playoffs, none of Mahomes’ 7 touchdown passes even gained 20 yards, let alone were thrown that far.
Without Hill, the only thing this offense was missing were the deep throws for touchdowns. But who can argue with the results when the Chiefs ranked No. 1 in points, yards, first downs, touchdown passes, net yards per pass attempt, and No. 2 on third down and red zone touchdown rate?
Mahomes and Reid, getting more creative with the short passes and getting some of the best efforts out of Kelce in his career, helped the Chiefs maintain an elite offense without Hill or a great No. 1 wide receiver replacement. Kelce even managed to score 4 touchdowns against the Raiders in a game where he only had 25 receiving yards.
The Chiefs were still must-see TV on offense last year.
The Buffalo Doubt
With the Chiefs mostly firing on all cylinders early in the season save for another inexplicable low-scoring loss against Frank Reich’s Colts, things were shaping up for an epic showdown with Buffalo in Week 6. Both teams came in with 4-1 records.
The Bills were living up to their preseason Super Bowl hype and Josh Allen was the favorite for MVP and off to a great start. This game, which featured the Bills as a 2.5-point road favorite, felt like it could be decisive for home-field advantage and the MVP award.
It was an entertaining back-and-forth game, but Allen got the last score with his 14-yard game-winning touchdown pass to Dawson Knox with 1:04 left. Mahomes had plenty of time to answer the defense that he scored on with 13 seconds left in the playoffs, but this time he needed a touchdown. The previous drive for Kansas City ended with Von Miller sacking Mahomes on third down, making his impact felt in a big moment, exactly the reason the Bills added him.
But just two snaps into this final drive, Mahomes forced a pass to rookie Skyy Moore and it was intercepted to end the game. Mahomes has two games in his career where he threw multiple interceptions and was held under 24 points at home, and they were both against Buffalo in losses the last two regular seasons. This was also the first time in Mahomes’ career that he did not cover or push the spread as an underdog.
Allen has this Kansas City defense figured out, but there would be no playoff rematch. For the second year in a row, Buffalo’s season peaked with a win in Kansas City in October. Allen injured his elbow against the Jets, coughed up the most devastating fumble in the NFL in over 40 years in a shocking loss to the Vikings, and then Miller was lost for the season with a torn ACL on Thanksgiving.
The Bills were still Super Bowl favorites late in the year, but they were dealt a tough blow after what happened to Damar Hamlin on a routine-looking play in Cincinnati. He fortunately was able to make a full recovery, but the emotional toll could be seen on this team, and they were very flat by the time they faced the Bengals in a 27-10 divisional round loss. In the snow without the pass rush of Miller, the Bills had no pressure on Joe Burrow, who was playing without three starting linemen due to injury.
That set up a rematch with the Chiefs in the title game, making Bengals-Chiefs the hottest rivalry among elite teams in the NFL today.
The Cincinnati Doubt
Buffalo was a huge story in the NFL last year even before the Hamlin event rocked the football world. But you still thought there was a chance the Chiefs and Bengals would be the last teams standing in the AFC.
Cincinnati started 0-2 and 4-4, but they started picking things up, and Ja’Marr Chase returned from injury just in time for the rematch with the Chiefs in Week 13. Despite Kansas City leading in the fourth quarter again, the Bengals came back to get a 27-24 win, the same score as last year’s title game. This time Kelce lost a fumble, and the Chiefs missed a long field goal after Mahomes was pressured on a third down. Then the defense was unable to get Burrow off the field, allowing a third-and-long conversion that wrapped things up and denied Mahomes another game-winning drive attempt.
So, in the two big tests against rivals Buffalo and Cincinnati, the Chiefs lost and were not able to score more than 24 points in either game. These were really the only AFC teams that had the quarterback, weapons, and defense to give the Chiefs problems.
Despite losing to the No. 2 and No. 3 seeds, the Chiefs still finished with the No. 1 seed after finishing 14-3. The 2022 Chiefs actually set an NFL record by becoming the first team to have a fourth-quarter lead in 20 games in one season.
But with the Bengals on a 10-game winning streak, they headed back to Arrowhead, which some started calling “Burrowhead” because of the 3-0 record the Bengals had in these Kansas City games going back to last year. However, every win was by 3 points and could have gone either way.
The Bengals even opened as a slight road favorite in this rematch, because Mahomes suffered that high-ankle sprain the week before against Jacksonville and was visibly hobbled. He missed the second quarter, but he did return to finish the game and threw a nice touchdown to ice the 27-20 win against a competitive but overmatched Jacksonville team.
The Bengals looked fantastic in Buffalo, the best the offense has done yet in a playoff game under Burrow. But they were going to face a better pass rush as the Chiefs had 55 sacks, which ranked No. 2 in the NFL despite all the other less flattering numbers for this young defense. Again, the Bengals were down three offensive line starters, their weakest unit to start with, after injuries late in the season. The Chiefs know how that can be after what happened to them in Super Bowl 55 against Tampa Bay.
With Mahomes not 100% but ready to play the best he could, the Chiefs finally gave their quarterback a defensive performance worthy of respect against an elite offense. The Chiefs sacked Burrow 4 times early in the game, including the first playoff sack of Chris Jones’ career. It somehow took him 14 playoff games to get one, but he didn’t have to wait long for his second playoff sack.
The Chiefs were controlling play early, but Mahomes aggravated his ankle in the third quarter and was limping again. Soon after, he made his only big mistake with a lost fumble, and the Bengals drove 45 yards for a game-tying touchdown with nearly a whole quarter to go.
The defense came away with a fourth-quarter interception of Burrow, but it looked like they may blow the game at the end again after giving up a third-and-16 conversion. But on a huge third-and-7, Jones made his second playoff sack, the biggest sack of his career, to force the Bengals to punt. Skyy Moore did not have a good rookie season with some muffs and errors, but he made his most timely play with a 29-yard return.
Mahomes had 30 seconds left at midfield. He scrambled on a third down for a first down. He was shoved as he was going out of bounds, which drew a 15-yard flag and made the field goal very realistic. Harrison Butker was good from 45 yards away and the Chiefs ended their losing streak to the Bengals, this time handing them a 3-point loss for some payback.
Mahomes passed for 326 yards and 2 touchdowns on a day when his running game only gave him 17 carries for 34 yards. Not bad for a quarterback on a high-ankle sprain. Marquez Valdes-Scantling did not have the best season in trying to be a deep threat for Mahomes like he was for Aaron Rodgers in Green Bay, but he picked a great time to have his best game with 6 catches for 116 yards and a touchdown.
The Chiefs were going back to the Super Bowl just 8 days after it looked like Mahomes’ postseason may have ended with an injury against the Jaguars.
The Philadelphia Doubt
While the Bills (early) and Bengals (late) were stealing a lot of Kansas City’s thunder last year, the Eagles were the class of the NFC. They were the NFL’s last unbeaten team at 8-0, and they made that run look easy too. After Allen’s MVP campaign crashed and burned in November, Jalen Hurts was the favorite to leapfrog Mahomes for MVP before he injured his shoulder in Chicago in Week 15, and he missed the big showdown with Dallas in front of a national audience.
Hurts finished as the runner-up to Mahomes for the MVP award, but the Eagles had a very formidable offense and a better defense than the Chiefs, who were also dealing with numerous injuries to their wide receivers going into the big game.
With both teams scoring touchdowns on their opening drives, you could tell this would be a classic Super Bowl. But the Chiefs were held scoreless on their next three drives in the half, and Mahomes again aggravated his injury and looked more frustrated than ever about it before halftime as the Eagles went to the locker room with a 24-14 lead.
Hurts’ only big mistake in the game was a brutal fumble that was returned for a touchdown. But the Eagles had to prove they could hold on as they were a team that did great in the second quarter (plus-126 in scoring differential) but only had a +4 margin in the other quarters combined.
The inevitability of the Chiefs happened again as they came out of the locker room and strung together three straight touchdown drives to take the lead. The Eagles badly blew coverages on the last two scores, leaving receivers open for walk-in touchdowns.
But Kansas City’s defense was not able to stop Hurts from scoring a game-tying touchdown and 2-point conversion to tie it at 35, ensuring this game would have the most points ever by a Super Bowl loser. The Chiefs took over with 5:15 left, and as he did against the Bengals, Mahomes used his legs to make the pivotal play of the game-winning drive. This time it was a 26-yard scramble into field-goal range.
Three plays later, the Chiefs faced a critical third-and-8 with 1:54 left. Without a conversion, the Eagles were going to have plenty of time to get a game-tying or go-ahead score. But after Mahomes’ pass fell incomplete, the Eagles were penalized for defensive holding on a ticky-tack call in that spot. That carries an automatic first down, so the Chiefs were going to be able to run the clock down and kick a short go-ahead field goal with seconds left.
Finally, the Chiefs were in a position to win the Super Bowl. They outlasted the best of the best with a quarterback on one leg. Butker made a 27-yard field goal with 8 seconds left, and the Chiefs prevailed 38-35. Mahomes, who won his second Super Bowl MVP award, is now 8-1-1 ATS and 7-3 SU as an underdog in his career.
It is hard to imagine how Mahomes could top this season, which reset the blueprint for what is possible for a Super Bowl-winning team:
- It only took 57 seasons, but Mahomes is the first quarterback to lead the NFL in passing yards and win the Super Bowl in the same season.
- Mahomes is the first quarterback since Kurt Warner (1999 Rams) to win MVP, first-team All-Pro, and Super Bowl MVP in the same year. League MVPs were on an 0-9 Super Bowl run and first-team All-Pro quarterbacks were 0-8 before Mahomes in 2022.
- The Chiefs join the 2006 Colts and 2011 Giants as the only teams since 1989 (and likely ever) to win a Super Bowl with a defense ranked lower than No. 15 in points per drive allowed. The Chiefs were No. 21 and won the Super Bowl after allowing 35 points on 10 drives.
- Mahomes had a cap hit of 17% – the previous high for a Super Bowl-winning quarterback was Steve Young (13.1%) with the 1994 49ers, the beginning of the salary-cap era.
- The 2022 Chiefs are just one of seven Super Bowl winners to have a minus-3 or worse turnover differential in the regular season. They were plus-4 in the playoffs.
- The 2022 Chiefs are the first defense to win a Super Bowl after allowing 30 touchdown passes in the regular season. Their 33 touchdowns allowed were four more than any other defense in 2022.
- Mahomes is the only quarterback to win a Super Bowl after his team allowed 25 points per game in the playoffs, and he has done it twice now (2019, 2022).
We are witnessing history when we watch the Chiefs these days.
Offseason Review
We are used to seeing Super Bowl champions lose key pieces, and the Chiefs are no different. Most teams would start to panic if they lost their Pro Bowl left tackle and offensive coordinator, but the Chiefs are not a normal team.
Let’s see if this makes it to October as a relevant storyline, but the Chiefs have lost offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy to the Commanders. He has been wanting a head coaching job but settled for the chance to make Ron Rivera’s offense look good for a change.
The Chiefs are going with Matt Nagy, who may have failed as Chicago’s head coach, but he was already successful as Kansas City’s offensive coordinator in 2017, Alex Smith’s big year, and when Mahomes made his first start as a rookie. Nagy was already the quarterbacks coach last year in Kansas City, so Mahomes and Reid know him very well.
Bieniemy did not call the plays, Reid is still the mastermind of the offense, and they still have Mahomes and Kelce last time I checked. This should be fine, but if there’s any struggle on offense this month, you will hear this change brought up when it’s likely not the real issue.
On the offensive line, the Chiefs let Orlando Brown Jr. go to Cincinnati where he will be Joe Burrow’s blind side protector. Brown is a very intriguing player as he is the only player in the NFL since the 1970 merger to make four Pro Bowls early on and wind up playing for three different teams in his first six seasons. The Ravens, who are a smart organization, already let him walk in 2021 when he joined the Chiefs.
To replace Brown, the Chiefs signed Donovan Smith, who made 124 starts in Tampa Bay and has been on some elite passing offenses. Is Brown to Smith a downgrade? Probably. Is this going to drastically weaken the offense? Certainly not.
But it could become an issue in certain big games when right tackle Jawaan Taylor is also a Florida reclamation project after 66 lackluster starts for the Jaguars. The Chiefs are still going with very experienced starters at the tackle positions, but one quick edge pressure can spell doom in this league against the right opponent. Imagine if Mahomes had half a second less to throw Jet Chip Wasp to Hill in Super Bowl 54. Suddenly, those coin-flip games start going the other way more often, but Mahomes is usually excellent at avoiding sacks, and it is hard to recall many Reid-coached offenses that were not solid up front.
You expect the offense to adapt and adjust. On defense, things could get more interesting. The Chiefs have eight starters whom they drafted in 2020-22, including four from last year who are no longer rookies and will be looking for noticeable improvement. The Chiefs also used a first-round pick this year on defensive end Felix Anudike-Uzomah, who will likely just be part of the rotation off the bench this year.
But there is a certain defender who may not be there that is holding things up for the Chiefs right now, and that is just one of the factors casting some doubt on the repeat campaign.
This Year’s Area of Interest: Did We Jump the Gun on 2022’s Fatal Flaws?
If you had to list the biggest flaws that could prevent the Chiefs from repeating in 2023, you could just update the same talking points that were supposed to hold the Chiefs back in 2022:
- Are the wide receivers good enough to keep this offense elite, or will a 34-year-old Travis Kelce still have to do the heavy lifting? Pete Retzlaff is the only tight end to ever have a 1,000-yard season at age 34 or older, and he did it as a converted wideout in 1965.
- Is this young, subpar defense going to get better, and what if Chris Jones continues his holdout and misses real games?
- Has the AFC West and other AFC contenders closed the gap on Kansas City so that this team might finally have to play a road playoff game for the first time in the Mahomes era?
Maybe we were just a year too early because these all suddenly look more problematic going into Week 1 of 2023.
First, wide receiver is the position group on the Chiefs with the biggest potential and the biggest risk. JuJu Smith-Schuster (Patriots) is gone after serving as the de-facto No. 1 wide receiver. Kadarius Toney may slip into that role this year after the team traded for him last year, but his main problem is he is always hurt. He makes Sammy Watkins look indestructible. Toney also has topped more than 40 receiving yards in just 4-of-22 appearances in his NFL career. There is some fun potential here with a healthy Toney, but do not count on it.
If Kelce gets hurt, this could get ugly fast. Valdes-Scantling and Moore could certainly end up looking better in Year 2 with Mahomes, but with things not all clicking last year, it is hard to expect greatness there. People have a lot of hope for reserves Justyn Ross and second-round rookie Rashee Rice, but they are very unproven going into the season. At least they have Mahomes throwing them the ball.
With the defense, we have come to expect the unit will not be good, but they just need to make sure they get a few timely sacks and turnovers and not give up 30 points that often.
But all bets are off if Chris Jones were to actually go through with a holdout over his contract. He had 15.5 sacks and 46 pressures last year in his first All-Pro season. Since the Chiefs also let veterans Frank Clark (Broncos) and Carlos Dunlap (free agent) go, that means they could be without 54 of their 118 quarterback hits from last season if Jones does not report back. Clark had so-so production in the regular season, but he was a beast in the playoffs for Kansas City. But without Jones, this defense could revert to 2018 levels.
You like to believe the two sides will work things out and get their best defender back in action. However, with a big game on Thursday night against Detroit, time is running out on the Chiefs before this absence starts affecting real games.
Finally, maybe this will be the year when the AFC West can start making life harder on the Chiefs, who are 42-6 in division games since 2015, and they have won 15 straight games against Denver.
But the Broncos hired Sean Payton, a Hall of Fame-caliber coach, who can fix Russell Wilson and the bottom-ranked offense. Wilson had some of his best moments against Kansas City last year too in close losses. The Broncos and Raiders can’t keep blowing 11 fourth-quarter leads together, can they? The Raiders replaced Derek Carr with Jimmy Garoppolo, who could be a better fit for what Josh McDaniels wants to do. The Chargers also will try to get better health at wide receiver and defense (Joey Bosa and J.C. Jackson) for Justin Herbert, who is one of the few quarterbacks who can go drive for a drive with Mahomes. The Chargers have had a fourth-quarter lead in every Mahomes vs. Herbert game, but they are only 1-4 in them.
Last year was fool’s gold in the AFC West, but the improvements this year could be real this time. The upgrades around the AFC in general could make things tougher for the Chiefs to claim another No. 1 seed and return to the Super Bowl:
- The Jaguars will have Calvin Ridley to give them more firepower when they match up with the Chiefs in Jacksonville in Week 2.
- The Jets acquired Aaron Rodgers and could give him the best team support he’s had since his 2010 Super Bowl season. We may finally see the first Rodgers vs. Mahomes game in Week 4.
- The Dolphins and Chiefs will play each other in Week 9 in Germany, and the Dolphins will hope to have Tua Tagovailoa, who bested Mahomes in many passing efficiency categories last year, healthy for all 17 starts and the playoffs after multiple concussions last season. Tyreek Hill should be excited for that one against his former team.
- The Chiefs will host the Eagles, still the favorites in the NFC, in a Super Bowl rematch after their bye in Week 11.
- The Bills come to Kansas City in Week 14 for a late-afternoon showdown, and they will hope to have a healthy defense for that one.
- The Bengals come to Kansas City in Week 17 (New Year’s Eve) for another huge late-afternoon showdown, and their offensive line should be healthier with Brown at left tackle.
The Chiefs won’t play the Ravens in the regular season, but that is another team with big expectations after getting Lamar Jackson back with a new contract, new receivers, and a new offensive coordinator.
Plenty of challenges are coming up for the Chiefs this year. Most of the big games are at home, but we have seen them lose some of these showdowns there over the years.
We might be questioning every year of the Mahomes era if the defense is good enough or a detriment to win a championship. We might be asking every year if the wide receivers are good enough until they establish a new No. 1 that can be trusted. We might be wondering if this is the year someone else wins the AFC West until it finally happens as the Chiefs inch closer to New England’s streak of 11 straight division titles in 2009-19.
But until new talking points emerge, these are the ones you should be focusing on for the Chiefs.
Best Bets for the 2023 Chiefs
You could bet against a team to repeat, and you would have only been wrong 8 times since 1967. But the Chiefs are not your normal team, and you should bet against Mahomes at your own risk. We will gladly take over 11.5 wins and another AFC West title as the best bets.
The Chiefs have gone 33 straight games without losing by more than 4 points. The only longer streaks in NFL history were 34 games by the 1940-42 Bears and 1965-67 Packers. The Chiefs have also had at least a tie in the fourth quarter in 33 straight games, which neither the Bears nor Packers pulled off during those runs. That record belongs to the 2009-11 Packers, who had at least a fourth-quarter tie in 43 straight games.
This team is historically competitive, but repeating is a different case as it usually takes a stronger team in Year 2 to pull it off. The 1973 Dolphins were not undefeated like the 1972 team, but they had some better statistical metrics against a far tougher schedule. Similar things can be said about the 1979 Steelers compared to 1978. The 1975 Steelers, 1989 49ers, 1998 Broncos, and 2004 Patriots were all clear improvements on their previous season.
The 2023 Chiefs have a chance to be a more complete team than last year’s, especially if the defense gets better. The Chiefs can get some revenge on the Bills and Bengals by beating them at home in December in those key games. But as far as another No. 1 seed to make the path to the Super Bowl go through Kansas City again, that will really depend on if the AFC North and AFC East can be 3-team races (Pittsburgh and the Jets step up) and keep those team’s records down, and if the AFC West will still significantly trail the Chiefs.
But we know it will come down to some coin-flip games again, including maybe some literal coin-flips in overtime games like the Chiefs won in 2021 against the Chargers and Bills. From Dee Ford lining up offsides to third-and-15 against the 49ers to 13 seconds against Buffalo to the Eagles getting flagged on third down, every Kansas City season seems to come down to a few key moments in big games. They can’t all go the team’s way.
While the Reid-Mahomes ring count could just as easily be zero or four right now, you must enjoy the ride, savor the two championships already won, and appreciate that we are witnessing historic greatness in real-time.
NFL Pick: Kansas City Chiefs over 11.5 wins (-134 at FanDuel)
NFL Pick: Kansas City Chiefs to win AFC West (-180 at FanDuel)
