Kansas City Chiefs will still have doubters win or lose vs. Dallas Cowboys

The Kansas City Chiefs face one of their most substantial offseason opponents on Sunday afternoon at Arrowhead Stadium in a highly-anticipated matchup against the visiting Dallas Cowboys in Week 11. It’s a dream game for the network broadcasting the game, considering the star power involved on both sides along with the fact that it could be a Super Bowl preview with how the conferences are shaping up on both sides.

For the Chiefs, however, no matter how things turn out on Sunday, they will still face their doubters—win or lose.

Coming into this season, the Chiefs faced sky-high expectations—and rightfully so—with back-to-back Super Bowl appearances on their resume (including one win). They’d commandeered the AFC for two seasons and hosted a third championship game in 2018. They’d also dominated their own division for five consecutive seasons. With a Super Bowl window as wide as any other team, the Chiefs were odds-on favorites to make another championship run.

It’s the Chiefs’ own fault, then, that they’ve lost the credibility they’d earned coming into the year. Their opening win against the Cleveland Browns was a close call, but from that point forward, the Chiefs became more known for mistake-prone football and being unable to hang with real contenders. They lost to the Baltimore Ravens, L.A. Chargers, Buffalo Bills, and Tennessee Titans—basically every other talented AFC team was able to notch a win against K.C.

The K.C. Chiefs will still hear the doubters even if they beat the Dallas Cowboys.

What’s worse is how bad the Chiefs looked in some of these losses—namely how often they were shooting themselves in the foot. If the postseason exposes sloppy teams, then the Chiefs looked like definite pretenders. They led the league in turnovers for most of this season (and had more at midseason than any other full year under Andy Reid). Penalties were a major concern, not to mention the clear miscommunications, dropped passes, and poor tackling displayed on the field.

Even as the Chiefs have turned their season around, the doubters remain due to the game-by-game conditions. They are currently on a three-game win streak, a stretch in which they’ve gained the AFC West lead and secured a hold on postseason positioning, but that hasn’t silenced the naysayers. They beat the New York Giants, but they were a laughable opponent. They took care of the Green Bay Packers, but Aaron Rodgers didn’t even play. They embarrassed the Las Vegas Raiders, but the wheels have been coming off of that entire team for a few weeks.

So why would the Dallas game be different? It won’t, even if the Chiefs win. This time around, the narrative would likely read something like, “Yeah, but the Cowboys weren’t playing with several important players.” That much would be true. The Cowboys will not have a Pro Bowl wide receiver (Amari Cooper), a Pro Bowl left tackle (Tyron Smith), and their top two pass rushers (Randy Gregory, Demarcus Lawrence) along the defensive line.

If that feels unfair to the Chiefs, it is. There’s no way around it. The Chiefs certainly are not in control of their opponents, and if they’re taking care of business, then that’s all they can do. It’s also true that every team has injuries at this point in the season, and attrition is just part and parcel in the National Football League. Some persons likely won’t give the Chiefs credit no matter who they beat and will find reasons regardless.

None of this should matter for the Chiefs, however. A win is a win and it doesn’t matter if it’s close or a blowout, sloppy or well-executed. The Chiefs are looking better in all facets of the game against the teams they’re scheduled to play, and if those are injury-laden or subpar opponents, then it’s not as if K.C. can ring the league for greater competition. Besides, all things will shake out in the end to show the true colors of each franchise, Chiefs included.