It’s been a rollercoaster of a season for the Kansas City Chiefs, one in which they’ve lost their credibility and found it again only to create a few questions near season’s end. As it turns out, that’s par for the course for every NFL franchise these days.
In the latest pre-postseason survey of NFL Power Rankings, the truth about the difficulty of winning week after week in the National Football League has truly come to the surface. The Chiefs weren’t even able to win their own conference this year and lost an important AFC battle to the Cincinnati Bengals in Week 17, but that hasn’t stopped those who vote in such endeavors—Power Rankings, that is—to hold a deep respect for the Chiefs.
If we’ve learned anything on a macro level as fans about the state of the league in 2021, it’s that Chiefs head coach Andy Reid is right when he says it’s hard to win games. Just ask the Baltimore Ravens or Indianapolis Colts or Los Angeles Chargers, all of which are somehow not playing in the postseason. It seems like each week on the NFL schedule brought multiple head-scratching upsets and even the league’s very best teams overall have embarrassments on their resumes.
The Kansas City Chiefs are earning a lot of respect in a survey of NFL Power Rankings as the playoffs are set to begin.
That’s certainly true for the Chiefs, at least in stretches where they were frustrated by losing four of their first seven games. That said, the Chiefs have also taken care of business against every team who was a clear mismatch—which is something that cannot be said for some of the league’s better teams. (Just ask the Titans who are the top seed yet lost to the New York Jets and Houston Texans.)
So despite the fact that the Chiefs lost to the Bengals in Week 17 and barely overcame Drew Lock and the Broncos on the road in Week 18, the Chiefs are riding high in the latest round of NFL Power Rankings.
Several sites have the Chiefs at No. 2 overall, just behind the top-seeded Green Bay Packers in the NFC, who are (nearly) universally locked in at No. 1 overall and should be considered the heavy favorites to not only make but win Super Bowl LVI. The Chiefs are runners-up in multiple Power Rankings columns that came out this week, including Bleacher Report.
Sporting News columnist Vinnie Iyer agrees and has the Chiefs at No. 2 but he also admits the vulnerability in doing so when he writes, “The Chiefs (+450) seem more a lot more vulnerable with Patrick Mahomes and their defense than in their consecutive Super Bowl runs the past two playoffs.”
The same exact thing can be said of Dalton Miller’s words at Pro Football Network. Despite ranking the Chiefs at No. 2 as well, he admits the Denver game doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. “Kansas City cannot struggle against the run in the playoffs the way they did against Denver in Week 18,” he writes.
Perhaps that unsettling feeling is what caused the Chiefs to slip to No. 3 overall overall at CBS Sports where Cody Benjamin admits it’s been “ugly” at times but lauds the team’s ability to score at will. Ryan Dunleavy for the New York Post puts the Chiefs at the same slot and says the entire conference is tied to the health of Tyreek Hill’s heel injury.
Over at NBC Sports, the Chiefs are at No. 3 but it’s interesting that the Packers aren’t at No. 1 either. Instead, a Super Bowl champ is crowned a champ until they are no longer in that role with the Buccaneers at No. 1. As for the Chiefs, Justin Leger writes that anyone would be “foolish to bet against Patrick Mahomes and this lethal Chiefs offense.” We couldn’t agree more.