Why the regular season didn’t matter for the Kansas City Chiefs

A dynasty is at stake, which is why the regular season really doesn’t matter for these Chiefs anymore.

As the game clock ticked down to zero on Sunday at Arrowhead Stadium, it brought to a close the strangest regular season I can ever remember.

There were a lot of things that made the 2020 NFL season bizarre—the coronavirus pandemic, the limited number of fans in stadiums, and a team taking a victory lap after a Week 5 win, to name a few. But what made the regular season so strange for me was that, as it went along, I came to realize something: for the Kansas City Chiefs, at least, the regular season simply did not matter.

I kept thinking about how the regular season was simply a means to an end, a path the Chiefs must take in order to get to their ultimate destination of the playoffs and the Super Bowl.

It might sound like a strange thing to admit, but I stopped caring about regular season results. Wins over teams like the Denver Broncos, Miami Dolphins and New England Patriots just didn’t have much significance. Even in games against other Super Bowl contenders like the New Orleans Saints, Buffalo Bills, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Baltimore Ravens, it didn’t matter to me if we won or lost.

I wasn’t bothered because I knew that regardless of the result the Chiefs would still be one of the best teams in the league, and come the playoffs, I would back them to win against anyone. I wasn’t bothered because I knew that regardless of the result the Chiefs would still be one of the best teams in the league, that in the end they were just too good for the results to not take care of themselves. I knew, like we all knew, that Kansas City would win the AFC West. I knew, like we all knew, that they would end up holding one of the conference’s top seeds at the end.

Even if the Chiefs had lost to the Bills or the Saints or the Ravens, even if they’d only been able to secure the number three seed, I knew that come the playoffs I would still back them to win against absolutely anybody. All of this had a bizarre impact on the way I thought about the regular season. To me, the whole thing felt like one giant preseason—17 weeks for the Chiefs to prepare for what really mattered all along, the playoffs.

Nobody really cares about results or performances in the preseason. It’s a chance for players to get their work in, an opportunity for coaches to experiment with schemes and game plans. And as long as injuries, particularly to star players, are kept at a minimum, that’s all that really matters.

To me, that is exactly how the entire regular season felt. Yes, there were issues along the way, including troubles in the red zone, injuries along the offensive line, and the loss of rookie sensation Clyde Edwards-Helaire. However, the season gave the Chiefs time to work on addressing these things and more, and at the end of the day Kansas City ended up exactly where we thought they would be: as division champions and the number one seed in the AFC.

The regular season matters for teams like the Cleveland Browns, who hadn’t made the playoffs in 17 seasons, or the Buffalo Bills, who hadn’t won their division in a quarter of a century. But for Kansas City, there really wasn’t anything to gain from the regular season. Their goals and expectations are greater than anything it can offer. The Super Bowl is what matters, not any regular season matchup.

As Chicago Bulls guard Ron Harper once said, a great regular season “don’t mean a thing without a ring”.

As a Chiefs fan, this really was unknown territory. Not in my lifetime, and possibly not ever, has Kansas City ever been such a sure thing to be so good. Never like this have the playoffs been all but guaranteed, or Super Bowl appearances expected. Not even the 2019 season felt this way.

Then, the Chiefs still had everything to prove. The ghosts of previous playoff debacles loomed over them. After winning their first Super Bowl in 50 years and banishing those playoff demons along the way, the Chiefs have shown they are good enough to overcome just about anything. In a way, the pressure was off for the Chiefs during the season. It wasn’t about wins and losses so much as it was about building towards the playoffs.

Regular season games might not have mattered, but the ones coming up certainly do. The real season starts now, and it’s time to run it back.