2018 Kansas City Chiefs named as one of 10 best teams of decade

The Kansas City Chiefs didn’t even make it to the Super Bowl but that didn’t stop them from making NFL.com’s 10 best teams of the decade.

So it turns out that winning a Super Bowl doesn’t actually guarantee that you were the best team in a given season, and it certainly doesn’t warrant a spot on a list of best teams from the decade—at least Tom Blair, writer for NFL.com

As it turns out, context matters. A list of the NFL’s best teams of the past decade only includes three actual Super Bowl winners from Blair. The list also includes a few Super Bowl losers and a startling amount of teams that never even had a chance at the Lombardi, the Kansas City Chiefs included.

In his most recent column for the shield, Blair made his list of the decade’s best teams and included the 2018 Kansas City Chiefs in the process. Yes, a team with a league-worst defense was ranked at No. 9 overall in terms of the best teams to suit up since we turned the calendar to 2010. If that sounds like an odd pick, Blair admits as much in his explanation.

"The Chiefs might be the least-balanced team here. The defense was terrible, and Kansas City lost a head-to-head regular-season matchup with the Rams, a legit contender for this list. And yet, Patrick Mahomes’ debut season as a starter was so transformative — and meant so much to the game — that I had to find a way to include the team that made it possible."

In case you’re still trying to find a way to appropriately judge the impact of Patrick Mahomes for the Chiefs, this might be a good place to start. It’s possible for a franchise to not make it to the Super Bowl (let alone win it) and employ a defense so bad that the defensive coordinator is fired immediately following the season and still be considered as an incredible team. That’s what 50 touchdowns and 5,000 passing yards will get you.

The truths is that the Chiefs won 12 games but they were in all 16. They also came within an offsides call of making the Super Bowl against the L.A. Rams. The Chiefs were the NFL’s most exciting team in 2018 and they will be on primetime as much as any other franchise as long as Mahomes is starting.

What’s interesting is that the Chiefs are hardly the only non-Super Bowl team to make it. In fact, at No. 10, the Jacksonville Jaguars from 2017 are an even more suspect addition to the list given their own lopsided nature as well. Also included on the list was 2011 Green Bay Packers, who lost in the divisional round and the 2015 Arizona Cardinals who also lost in the conference championship round.

Blair named the 2013 Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks as the best team formed this decade (so far).