NFL power rankings: KC Chiefs keep falling as they should after Week 7

The Kansas City Chiefs deserve to fall in the latest round of NFL Power Rankings.

If there’s a ranking of any kind anywhere measuring any amount of anything, and the Chiefs are on it, they deserve to fall. On Sunday, after watching such a miserable effort on both sides of the ball by the Chiefs against the Tennessee Titans, it’s hard to imagine any fan feeling any other way.

At this stage of the 2021 season, the Chiefs haven’t come close to matching the expectations laid upon them in the preseason. Remember at one point, the discussion around the Chiefs was whether or not they could win 20 consecutive games without a loss. Seven games later, the conversation is instead around whether or not Brett Veach should start selling off parts by the trade deadline.

The Chiefs are now 3-4 at present with only one convincing win on their resume, a few games that could have gone either way and two embarrassing losses. As a middling team, they are what their record says they are. What’s worse is that the rest of the AFC West decided to get a bit more competitive this offseason which means the Chiefs are now a last-place team, too. It’s been a fun season.

The Chiefs are falling yet again in the latest NFL Power Rankings.

A new batch of NFL Power Rankings is now out with Week 7 in the books, and the Chiefs have fallen quite a bit—which we support 100 percent. It’s not that we enjoy whipping our favorite team. Rather, we want to see some sort of reckoning, some wake-up call, some accountability put into place. We doubt NFL Power Rankings will be that tool, but if even one player reads them and gets upset enough to focus a bit more, we’re all for it.

Here at FanSided, Russell Baxter remains pretty high on the Chiefs—higher than we would expect—when listing them at No. 12, just down two spots from last week. Baxter has them immediately following the Titans and the Raiders.

At ESPN, the Chiefs fell five spots to No. 14 overall after still sitting just inside the top 10 at No. 9 last week even with a .500 record. Danny Kelly of The Ringer is just a bit more positive about the Chiefs at No. 13, but it’s a bit more clarifying to read here given that he also groups his power rankings into tiers. The Chiefs are bunched here with other teams under the label of “contenders” but they are last on that list. That feels just right.

Over at Sports Illustrated, Vinnie Iyer dropped the Chiefs another four spots to No. 13 overall this week. Iyer recognizes the fact that the Chiefs’ hopes are dwindling significantly at this stage of the year and that team has very little reason to hope. “Andy Reid will need to do some amazing coaching to turn this around and point KC back toward a third consecutive Super Bowl trip.”

We also love the honesty of Dalton Miller, who writes a weekly Power Rankings column for the Pro Football Network. He positions the Chiefs at No. 15 overall, almost exactly at the midpoint of the rankings. He writes, “This is just a bad team right now, and they drop significantly in our NFL Power Rankings because of it. We could not agree more.