Bury K.C.? Six factors that the Chiefs might still overcome

AI-assisted summary
• The Kansas City Chiefs defeated the Indianapolis Colts in overtime, improving their record to 6-5.
• Wide receiver Rashee Rice’s six-game suspension to start the season has been a disruption for the team.
• The Chiefs have struggled in one-score games this season after going undefeated in them last year.
• Key players like Travis Kelce and Chris Jones have seen a decline in their typical performance levels.
• Despite their struggles, the Chiefs remain in the AFC playoff hunt after what was considered a must-win game.

The Kansas City Chiefs are already in playoff mode. Whether they actually qualify for the 2025 NFL postseason is a completely different proposition.

The reigning AFC champions, who have won three of the past six Super Bowls, prevailed in overtime Sunday, defeating the Indianapolis Colts 23-20 in what might have effectively been a must-win game.

The Chiefs improved their record to 6-5, picking up a half-game on the idle Denver Broncos and Los Angeles Chargers in the highly competitive AFC West while otherwise keeping pace on the periphery of the conference playoff chase − though they remained in 10th place overall immediately after their narrow victory.

While a 10th straight divisional crown doesn’t seem to be in the offing, K.C. did live to fight another weekend − or Thursday, actually, as the Chiefs will next play on Thanksgiving afternoon against the Dallas Cowboys.

Yet despite Sunday’s escape from the Colts at Arrowhead, there’s been plenty wrong with the Chiefs since the start of the 2025 campaign. Let us count the reasons – specifically six of them:

1. The Rashee Rice disruption

Slice this however you want, but the six-game suspension K.C.’s top wideout served to start the season – for his reckless racing on a Dallas highway last year, which left six cars in a pileup and several people injured at a scene Rice left – hasn’t helped.

The Chiefs split their first six games without Rice in a predictive microcosm of their season and are 3-2 since he returned. From an individual perspective, he’s been instantaneously productive after a knee injury scuttled his 2024 season after four games – producing 34 catches for 394 yards and three touchdowns, including eight often crucial receptions for 141 yards against Indy. But when a team is average without you and effectively the same while having to belatedly integrate you into the attack midstream, what are you really bringing to the table?

2. Lady Luck’s wrath

No, this isn’t a Taylor Swift reference … yet. But the 2024 Chiefs, who finished the regular season with a 15-2 record – the best in franchise history – were 12-0 (including playoffs) in one-score games. Their meager plus-59 point differential in the regular season and minus-six mark in the playoffs, including a 22-point defeat in Super Bowl 59 that wasn’t as close as the score would suggest, is indicative of a team that was relatively average − particularly by the Chiefs’ dynastic standards.

But the pendulum has swung violently in the other direction this season. Kansas City entered Sunday with an 0-5 record, i.e. all of its losses, in one-score games before surviving the Colts. No regression to the mean here, simply living on the polarities.

3. Stunning AFC West regression

The Chiefs’ divisional rule wasn’t going to last forever, but they knew the barbarians were at the gates in 2024, when the Jim Harbaugh-led Chargers and Sean Payton-led Broncos both reached the playoffs as fairly surprising wild-card entries. Now, the palace has seemingly been overrun, those teams not only ahead of Kansas City in the standings but each with a win over the Chiefs in hand – potentially critically valuable currency when it comes time to sort out playoff tiebreakers at the end of the regular season.

4. Critical losses

Speaking of those tiebreakers, it’s better to lose interconference games – like when the Chiefs dropped their Super Bowl 59 rematch to the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 2, a much less penal defeat when the formula is applied. But in addition to those divisional setbacks, Kansas City has lost to the Jacksonville Jaguars and Buffalo Bills, other teams they could be vying with for one of those three wild-card berths. Not great.

5. Travis Kelce and Chris Jones

Aside from QB Patrick Mahomes and coach Andy Reid, Kansas City’s tight end (Kelce) and defensive cornerstone (Jones) would be the other two faces carved if a Mount Rushmore was ever built for the NFL’s most recent dynasty. Kelce, 36, has picked up the pace of late, but he wasn’t much of a factor during that 3-3 start when Rice wasn’t available to help draw coverage from him. Worse, Kelce admitted a poorly run route in the Week 1 game at Brazil that resulted in a shoulder injury to WR Xavier Worthy was entirely his fault. Worthy wound up missing most of the first three games, when K.C. was 1-2, its receiving corps further depleted by his absence. It’s fair to say Kelce is still one of the league’s better tight ends, if one in decline − especially relative to what he’s provided this team through the years.

Jones, 31, has had an even tougher season – with just three sacks and 24 pressures, ranking him 59th league-wide entering Week 12. Worse, PFF ranked him 111th of 124 qualified defensive linemen in terms of run defense coming into the weekend. Jones’ lack of gap discipline in the opening-night loss to the Chargers was notable on Bolts QB Justin Herbert’s game-icing run and drew the wrath of LB Drue Tranquill on the sideline. Jones had just one tackle against the Colts, though the Chiefs did limit Indianapolis RB Jonathan Taylor to 58 rushing yards and kept him out of the end zone.

6. Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid

Are they about to become victims of the outsized expectations they’ve fostered? All those division titles? Five Super Bowl appearances and three Lombardi Trophies? Heck, since Mahomes became the starter in 2018, his second season, he’s never failed to lead this team to the AFC championship game. Maybe this team isn’t really that good and deserves to be hovering around .500 − doesn’t mean “we” don’t think they should win at all … even if much of America is rejoicing that its Chiefs fatigue may be taking a break, if not ending. But don’t bury K.C. just yet, especially after Mahomes engineered a pair of field goal drives with his final two possessions Sunday − one bringing the Chiefs level with the Colts at the end of regulation, the second vanquishing the AFC South leaders in OT.

Taylor Swift

Would that we could blame “Wood.” But nah, not her fault. Sorry, haters (and we’re not!).