Another week, another AFC team stumbles when they have an opportunity to become the top dog in the conference. Join the club.
At the start of the year, it was the Chiefs losing to the Chargers, then it was the Ravens dropping their last four, and now we have the Bills. Once undefeated through four weeks, the Bills have dropped their last two, and their division lead to go with it. The conference has never been more open for the taking. Of course, we can’t overlook the Steelers and Colts at 4-1 and 5-1, respectively, but the AFC is as wide open as it has ever been in recent memory.
History tells us that starting slow, especially in a loaded conference, has been a death knell in recent years. Looking back at the Cincinnati Bengals—who many consider a contender when healthy—they’ve started 1-4, 0-2, and 0-3 in each of the last three seasons, which ultimately spelled disaster for them aside from a division title after their 1-4 start in 2022.
The AFC is wide open for the taking, and that's exactly what a slow-starting Chiefs team needed most.
Another unfortunate lens through which to view this start is playoff seeding. If you get off to a slow start, you’ll unfortunately watch the rest of the conference pass you by, no matter how you finish. A team like the Ravens, at this point in the season at 1-5, has less than a 1% chance of making the playoffs. Not to say that can’t change, but you become so dependent on help from your enemies as you move forward.
Luckily for the Kansas City Chiefs (and their rivals), the conference as a whole has started slow. Only one team has five wins through six weeks (the Colts), and only six teams have four wins (Bills, Patriots, Steelers, Jaguars, Chargers, and Broncos). The amount of parity we’re seeing through six weeks of the 2025 season is almost unheard of for most NFL fans. We have to go back over 10 years to the 2014 season to find a year without an undefeated team after six weeks.
The amount of similarity across the NFL is astounding through six weeks, and every team at this point is both a contender and a pretender. For many teams, they’ve been gifted extra time—more weeks to turn the boat around than they would have had in years past. To think there are no undefeated teams after four weeks, when in years past that number may have been as high as nine, changes the picture entirely. How would you challenge a divisional rival who was 9-0? But when you’re 3-3 and they’re 4-2, you’re in a much better position.
Such is the case for the Chiefs as they leave the hardest part of their schedule in this 2025 campaign. Of Kansas City’s last 11 games, five of those teams have a .500 record or worse through six games. Oddly enough, a 3-3 record feels like Christmas came early this year, the way the AFC keeps handing out gifts to K.C.