NFL.com’s panel of experts are having a tough time pinning down any sort of consensus on how the Kansas City Chiefs will fare in 2018.
One thing is clear: no one expects the Kansas City Chiefs to fail so miserably that they could end up near the NFL’s worst overall teams. After that, anything is up for grabs.
A panel of experts at NFL.com recently made their predictions for the AFC West and the forecasted results vary so widely that the only read on the Chiefs is that nothing is clear. While no one is predicting the Chiefs will bottom out with two or four or even six wins, anything else is possible, including a predicted 7-9 record from former Jacksonville Jaguars running back Maurice Jones-Drew.
Elliot Harrison comes in next at 8-8 overall and Dan Hanzus clocks in next at 9-7. Given that three of the five have already weighed in around the .500 mark shows that perhaps that will be the most popular way to view these Chiefs, as a team with as many positives as negatives and as many great performances in them as they will also look flat.
The Chiefs are not without hope, however, for a continued playoff run in 2018 despite the shift at quarterback to Patrick Mahomes, and Cythia Frelund and Daniel Jeremiah are both believers in Andy Reid’s transition at QB. Both experts have the Chiefs listed at 10-6 overall, a mark that would likely qualify them for postseason play.
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While the swing between 7 or 10 wins might not seem like much on the surface, they’re actually quite far apart when you consider how big every single win of an NFL season will be. The difference between 7 and 10 wins is the difference between expecting that team to finish 3rd or even 4th in its respective division or at the top. In other words, the aforementioned panel of experts believe the Chiefs to be somewhere between a first and potentially solid last place team.
What makes a few of these predictions even more surprising is that Andy Reid has never come close to a 7-9 record since he took over the Chiefs, including his first year when he and general manager John Dorsey inherited a two-win team from Scott Pioli. If the Chiefs were ever going to be middling, it should have been when they held the first overall pick in the draft. Instead the Chiefs showed they were ready to win from the outset and have averaged 10 wins every year in Reid’s tenure.
The Chiefs have missed the playoffs only once with Andy Reid as head coach and they were 9-7 that season. To think that this roster, especially with this youth and offensive firepower, is capable of being two games worse than they’ve ever been under Reid is really believing the worst about nearly everything related to the Chiefs.
Then again, given the team’s roster holes, preseason performance and list of young players slated for major roles, it makes sense that the team would earn such varied views before the season starts.