KC Chiefs come in at No. 1 in ESPN’s NFL Power Index

The Kansas City Chiefs are the defending Super Bowl champs, and honestly, it would be silly for anyone to rank them away from the top spot.

The official projections are in from ESPN, their mega-supercomputers, and the complex algorithms employed to determine their projections for the forthcoming NFL season and it’s good that even artificial intelligence is working well enough to back the Kansas City Chiefs in 2023.

ESPN’s FPI (Football Power Index) is a fancy formula that includes projected wins from Caesar’s, strength of schedule, returning starters, and a dash of paprika. Seriously they explain more here.

The Super Bowl participants from a year ago (the Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles) are once again the favorites to make the big game in ’23, per the FPI, but the Chiefs are one percentage point behind the Eagles in their predicted chances to make it all the way (13%). The reason being that the Eagles face much easier competition in the NFC than the Chiefs do.

The Chiefs are given a 77.3% chance of making the postseason. Within the AFC West, the L.A. Chargers are next at just over 50 percent. The Denver Broncos are next at 34 percent and then the Las Vegas Raiders at 27 percent.

Despite winning the West for seven consecutive seasons, the Chiefs have the third-highest chances to win their respective division at 55 percent. While that’s a solid percentage, it’s a more difficult road ahead to repeat than the paths faced by the San Francisco 49ers and Jacksonville Jaguars in the NFC West and AFC South, respectively.