What do the Kansas City Chiefs need to show to prove they are indeed the team to beat in the playoffs?
After another stunningly frustrating game last Sunday against the Denver Broncos, the Kansas City Chiefs came away with yet another narrow victory against a subpar opponent. Since KC’s narrow loss to the Cincinnati Bengals on December 4, the Chiefs are 4-0. But, the victories in that timeframe have almost created more cause for concern than they have stirred confidence in the fanbase. Two one-score wins against the 4-12 Denver Broncos and an overtime clash with the 2-13-1 Houston Texans have generated more “we’re so screwed” sentiment than they have roused any sort of a sense of confidence heading into postseason play.
Still yet, the Chiefs sit at 13-3 heading into a Week 18 game against the Las Vegas Raiders, a team the Chiefs beat by just one point earlier this season at home on Monday Night Football. Sure we can assume the lack of Carl Cheffers officiating this tilt might result in more points for the Chiefs, but the absence of Derek Carr might do the same for the Raiders. Shouldn’t the Chiefs (and we, the fans) be confident going into an end-of-season showdown with a Raiders team that’s been eliminated from the playoffs and is being led by Jarrett Stidham? Well, yeah, for sure. But we also had the same confidence in the previous 4 games, and outside of a comfortable game against the Seahawks where the margin of victory was higher than the air temperature we’ve come up with more questions than answers late in the season.
I, like most of you, have found myself tremendously puzzled by the 2022 Chiefs. How can a team be 13-3 with Patrick Mahomes going absolutely bananas statistically (5,000+ passing yards and 40+ touchdowns in what seems like a “this is just what he does” year) and we still are confident that the Bills, Bengals, and even the Chargers could knock us off on the right Sunday if the wrong things happen? How do we have franchise-altering stars like Travis Kelce, Chris Jones, and L’Jarius Sneed among others, and still feel that other teams are more loaded than the Chiefs? Why does it feel like we can’t have anything nice? When things are working, we get them ripped away from us by adjustments or the persistent need to chase statistical milestones. Why can’t we just blow out a bad team?
For all we know, the Chiefs could come out and blow the doors off of the Raiders and we could all strut into the playoffs as confident as we could be. It happened last year in Vegas when the Chiefs drilled the Raiders by a score of 40-14 with Mahomes going for over 400 yards passing and 5 TD. It can happen, and it very well may. But there’s also a distinct possibility, based on what we’ve seen the previous 4 weeks, that it could be a much closer affair than any of us want to stomach this coming Saturday. But the things that could make this a blowout win are also the things that will have Chiefs Kingdom heading into the playoffs with a “come at me, bro” outlook as opposed to the all-too-familiar “God I hope this goes ok” that we’ve become accustomed to.