Seven weeks ago, the Kansas City Chiefs hosted the Denver Broncos in a battle between the best two teams in the AFC West Division. At least, we knew at the time the Broncos were one of the best because they had advanced all the way to their conference championship game in 2025. Whether the Chiefs, who had dominated this division for nearly a decade, were still among the elite was unknown.
Why?
Their future Hall of Fame quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, suffered a serious knee injury late in the 2025 season in a year the defending conference champions won only six regular season games.
Was the clock ticking away on the Chiefs dominance?
It is worth noting that even though Mahomes was hurt last year it wasn’t until December and Kansas City’s disappointing season was already in the books. The year before, the Chiefs skirted disaster after disaster and got away like a fly avoiding a swatter all day in the kitchen. They won a record number of one-score games and it seemed that if they needed a late stop to preserve a win they got it; if they needed a late score to win it, they got it; if the Chiefs needed a last second field goal to win, they got it; and if they needed an opponent to miss a chip shot field goal to preserve a narrow win, the Chiefs got it.
Then they took this path of narrow victories into Super Bowl LIX and got clobbered by the Philadelphia Eagles by an 18 point margin, a gap not nearly as indicative of how much the Eagles dominated the play.