Putting Kansas City’s AFC West dominance into perspective

Sports rivalries are a big part of sports fandom. For Kansas City Chiefs fans, they have plenty of reasons to be happy with how rivalry games have gone.

The Kansas City Chiefs defeated the Denver Broncos 23-3 on Sunday to improve to 10-4 on the season. The win also puts the Chiefs at 5-0 against AFC West opponents this year.

The sound divisional record isn’t anything new. Kansas City’s dominance in the division has taken place for a few years now. Since 2015, the Chiefs are 26-3 against AFC West opponents. Since 2015, the Chiefs have lost to each of their division rivals just once.

While those numbers sound great, Chiefs fans deserve to have a little bit of fun with this. It’s time we dive deep into Kansas City’s surge in the division through five seasons.

The Chiefs have won their last six games against the AFC West, dating back to Week 17 of the 2018 season. In those six games, the Chiefs have outscored the Raiders, Chargers and Broncos by a score of 180-48, allowing an average of 8 points per game.

The Chiefs have yet to play the Chargers at home this season, which will take place in Week 17. But regardless of the outcome of that game, we can already say that the since 2015, the Chiefs will have a divisional record of either 6-0 or 5-1 each year.

In the three divisional losses the Chiefs have suffered, they lost by only 9 points. In the 29 total divisional games since 2015, the Chiefs have outscored the AFC West by a combined score of 842-497, allowing just 17.1 points per game while scoring just a little over 29 points per game.

The most impressive part about Kansas City’s hot run in the division is the ability to keep the train going while making a lot of changes with the personnel throughout the five years.

Starting with under center, the Chiefs have gone from Alex Smith to Patrick Mahomes and still have won most of their divisional games. Since 2015, the Chiefs have made plenty of changes on the roster while being able to keep the trend going. Some of the notable names of players who weren’t on the team when the divisional dominance started include Tyreek Hill, Mitchell Schwartz, Chris Jones, Frank Clark, Tyrann Mathieu and Harrison Butker.

Even with a plethora of changes on the roster in five years, the Chiefs own the division, no matter who they have.

The Chiefs have never won the AFC West in back-to-back years before 2017. Now, the Chiefs have won the division for four consecutive seasons, dating back to 2016. Andy Reid deserves a lot of the credit for helping Kansas City find prominence in the division. Now, he needs to help the Chiefs get over the playoff hump and reach the Super Bowl.