Bold predictions for each AFC West team heading into 2024

Kansas City Chiefs

I had to save the best—the one with the most predictable take—for last.

The Chiefs come into 2024 on a high that no team has experienced since the early 2000s—on the heels of back-to-back Super Bowl Championships. While there have been some distractions this offseason, Kansas City has improved markedly on the offensive side of the ball with the additions of Hollywood Brown and Xavier Worthy to the receiving corps. They've also maintained the same prowess on the defensive side of the ball in retaining the best front-four player in the league, Chris Jones, and adding depth in the defensive backfield after cornerback L'Jarius Sneed parted ways with the Chiefs.

So what's the boldest of bold predictions you could come up with for the Chiefs? How can you get bolder than back-to-back Super Bowls? Well, if it's not crystal clear by now, the answer is a 3-peat. No NFL franchise has ever gone back-to-back-to-back for three straight Super Bowl wins. That alone is cause for a little bit of a heat check when it comes to expectations for the upcoming Chiefs season. But when you consider the fact that the Chiefs have played nearly an entire extra season (15 games) throughout the previous 5 playoffs (2019-2023), you start to wonder if that will take a toll on them late in the season.

Let me double down on that. The Chiefs have played 15 additional games since 2019, easily the most by any team in the NFL in that span of time. They also play on every day of the week sans Tuesday in 2024. The Chiefs play 4 times in an 18-day stretch in December, with games on 12/8, 12/15, 12/21, and 12/25 against the Chargers, Browns, Texans, and Steelers—all teams that are primed to be playoff contenders by most prognostications in 2024. Brutal.

But hey, great expectations and the highest of standards have become a calling card for the Mahomes-era Chiefs. Last season they were essentially written off after a mid-season cold stretch that culminated in an embarrassing Christmas Day loss to the Raiders. They were given little chance to go into Buffalo and Baltimore and take down the AFC's 1 and 2 seeds as road underdogs. How'd that all turn out?

Patrick Mahomes is unstoppable. He is incomparable in today's NFL, and he's ultimately becoming an inevitable hurdle other teams can't get past. The Chiefs will stumble in 2024. There will be stretches where they don't look like they belong in the same room as the Lombardi Trophy. However, when the final whistle blows on Super Bowl LIX in Los Angeles, we will be talking about a new standard of dominance in the NFL.