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The NFL’s best playoff storylines involve the Kansas City Chiefs

By Jacob Harris

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In 2018, if there’s one franchise linked with intriguing plot lines and serious scoring appeal for the masses, it’s the Kansas City Chiefs.

With the start of another postseason, the NFL has turned its patented Playoff Storyline Generator up to eleven, scanning the field of Super Bowl hopefuls and exhausting every possible way to package and market a deep playoff run from each team.

Some teams, like the Dallas Cowboys, sell themselves; Cowboys games are routinely among the most watched in the regular season, even when the team isn’t particularly good. So despite being perhaps the most middling, unremarkable team in the playoffs, Dallas is always going to be on the list of teams the NFL would ideally like to see make a run.

The Kansas City Chiefs, on the other hand, have been a tough sell through more-or-less their entire existance. Over the last half-decade, in particular, they’ve been somewhere between very good and great, but have never been particularly sexy or exciting. Combine that with a smaller market like K.C. and you don’t exactly have the ideal team sitting in the national spotlight.

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But in 2018, if there’s one team overflowing with potential storylines and easy-to-package national appeal, it’s the Chiefs. Perhaps for the first time in their history, they’re the team most NFL fans would want to see make it to the Super Bowl out of the AFC.

Their national appeal is obvious; it begins and ends with Patrick Mahomes. You could stick the Chiefs in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming, and they’d still be one of the most watched teams with a quarterback like Mahomes crafting ludicrous magic every week. There are countless articles extolling the once-in-a-lifetime greatness of Mahomes, so I won’t spend any more time repeating what you’ve read and heard on loop for the last four months (as much as I want to).

Just having Mahomes is enough to propel the Chiefs into permanent national relevancy and make them appointment television for the next decade or more. But the 2018 season has also provided plenty of intriguing potential playoff storylines to help further cement K.C. newfound mass appeal.

On their road to the Super Bowl, the two AFC teams they’ll face off with will be some combination of the Houston Texans, Baltimore Ravens, Los Angeles Chargers, Indianapolis Colts, and New England Patriots. Any of these would be not only quality on-field matchups, but also would have ready-made storylines for the NFL to play off of to heighten the drama, as they so love to do.

With the Texans, it’d be all about the quarterback matchup; Mahomes vs. Deshaun Watson. In the moments between the announcement that the Chiefs had traded up to the 10th spot in the 2017 Draft and the announcement of the pick itself, there was a legitimate debate as to whether Mahomes or Watson was the guy Andy Reid and John Dorsey had invested so much of their future to jump up and get. The Chiefs obviously made the right choice, but Watson has also developed into one of the AFC’s better QBs despite much less help in his supporting cast than Mahomes has. Two QBs from the same draft class meeting in the playoffs is always an easy sell.

The Ravens are basically the Anti-Chiefs. They’re an elite defense that stays fresh for the entire game thanks to a plodding offense that runs the ball roughly 337 times a game (which they can afford to do since they have a kicker who can hit a field goal from the parking lot). That doesn’t exactly make for exciting football on its face. But when paired against the Chiefs’ quick strike, explosive offense and a run defense that makes one question why K.C.’s opponents ever attempt a single pass, you end up with a classic overtime triller in Week 14. The concept of a sequel to that game in a win-or-go-home environment is actually pretty thrilling.

The Los Angeles Chargers would provide a rubber match between division rivals, and give Mahomes the opportunity to end Philip Rivers’ last best chance at getting to the Super Bowl. On the other side, after leading a Week 15 comeback in Arrowhead, Rivers would undoubtedly get some love leading up to the game to be the one to snuff out K.C.’s young gunslinger’s first playoff run before it even started.

The Colts have to be the team that, deep down, all Chiefs fans simultaneously dread and desperately desire seeing in the playoffs. Objectively, there’s nothing about the playoff losses to Indy in 1995, 2003, 2006, and 2013 seasons that have any bearing on what would happen in 2019. But the Colts are undeniably one of the darkest clouds above the Chiefs in their playoff history, so seeing them coming into Arrowhead could feel like a bad omen. At the same time, it would also feel like the opportunity to finally exorcise a demon that has been festering in K.C. for over two decades. It’d also be fitting symbolism for Mahomes as The One—the QB to right all of the Chiefs’ past postseason wrongs.

Then there’s New England. It feels inevitable that to get to the Super Bowl, the Chiefs will have to defeat Bill Belichick, Tom Brady, and the Patriots. Part of me hesitates to characterize a Chiefs vs. Pats AFC Championship game as a chance for Mahomes to put Brady down for good, but screw it; a Chiefs vs. Pats AFC Championship game is a chance for Mahomes to put Brady down for good.

The Patriots have never seemed this vulnerable with Brady at QB. They feel older, slower, and in the early stages of crumbling. That’s not even a slight—everything dies. Mahomes and the Chiefs could establish themselves as the new class of the AFC as the Patriots begin to, at last, fade. Though at the same time, it could be yet another moment for Belichick and Brady to prove yet again that they’re still not finished. Either way, it makes for great television.

Which brings us to the Super Bowl. If the Chiefs make it to Atlanta, the majority of their possible opponents provide some familiarity, potential for interesting dramatic buildup, or both.

The Cowboys are the least fun matchup for the Chiefs, and the only one that just feels entirely boring. That’s mostly because, despite their worldwide popularity, the Cowboys themselves are mostly boring this year. Despite their strong defense, Dak Prescott isn’t remotely close to Mahomes in any form. This would be a blowout—fun for Chiefs fans, awful for everyone else. Plus, I’d dread the hackneyed, cringeworthy Cowboys vs. Indians window-dressing that’d be plastered all over the buildup to the game.

The Seahawks would be a fun matchup on the field, but their win over the Chiefs in Week 16 isn’t indicative of these teams facing off at full strength on both sides. The Chiefs were almost certainly not in must-win mode against the Seahawks a couple weeks ago, so a rematch with both teams in do-or-die mode would likely have a different outcome. The real core of the Seahawks and Chiefs being a decent interconference rivalry is their fanbases competing over who is the loudest. On a neutral playing field, you lose that aspect entirely. The Super Bowl is big no matter who is in it, but the Seahawks aren’t the best matchup for the Chiefs.

The Eagles, on paper, would be an ideal matchup. Doug Pederson, having already won a Super Bowl, meeting his mentor Andy Reid as he searches for his first would be a great story. But the Eagles are depleted by injury, and the odds that Nick Foles can drag this team to another championship are pretty slim. This would be a much more enjoyable matchup if Philly looked more like the 2017 version of themselves, but as it stands now it’s still one that would create some extra buzz.

New Orleans is the best matchup from a pure football perspective. Mahomes and Drew Brees are the favorites to win MVP, so it’d be an opportunity for whichever QB didn’t win the honor to prove to the other who the real MVP is. Outside of that, there isn’t a lot of intrigue here, but the game itself would no doubt be a classic; a back-and-forth battle between a future Hall of Famer and the league’s newest superstar. Both offenses are prolific, and while the Saints defense has been solid it’s never had to hold up against an offense like K.C.’s. It’d be high scoring, and it’d be a lot of fun.

Chicago would be an amazing buildup. You’ve got Andy Reid going up against his latest protege to turn a franchise around in Matt Nagy. The offensive schemes are very similar (more similar, in fact, than Pederson’s is to Reid’s). You’ve got the one QB, Mitchell Trubisky, who was taken before Mahomes. So you’d have Mahomes with a chance to prove to the world what everyone already knows, and Trubisky with a chip on his shoulder, wanting to prove to the world that the Bears didn’t make a mistake taking him over Mahomes. The result on the field would likely be a bit of fun, but nowhere near as exciting as the buildup would promise. The Bears are good, and they’re primed to continue to develop and become a force in the NFC, but they do still feel like they’re a year away from being a real threat in the playoffs

Finally, of course, we have the Rams. What other matchup do people want to see, really? How can you not pull for a rematch of a game in which 100 points were scored during the regular season? The league would be able to have their cake and eat it too, with one of their L.A. franchises making it to the Super Bowl without losing out on the league’s most exciting young player being there as well. And they’d get a sequel to one of the most exhilarating games ever played. I’d say the game could never live up to the hype, but I also said that before Week 11. If there ever was a matchup that fit the pyrotechnic pageantry that the NFL has molded the Super Bowl into, it’s the Los Angeles Rams vs. the Kansas City Chiefs.

Next. Shane Ray would be a perfect FA target. dark

Being the darlings of the NFL is uncharted waters for the Chiefs and their fans. Mahomes has singlehandedly plucked an entire organization from an endless loop of milquetoast seasons and thrust them into the limelight as the league’s must-see team. It’s been said over and over about this team, but this year feels different. Super Bowl or not, this postseason will be special.

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