Depending on which statistical model you attach your life’s importance to, the Chiefs have about a coin flip’s chance of reaching the playoffs after a 22–19 loss to the Broncos. The Chiefs are 5–5, have lost head-to-head matchups against every team currently holding an AFC wild-card spot (the Jaguars, Bills and Chargers) and have not been .500 this late in the season since 2015. That team, with Alex Smith at quarterback, started 1–5 and then won 11 consecutive games until losing in the divisional round of the playoffs.
The Chiefs are winless in one-score games this year after going an unfathomable 11–0 in those games last season. They are also—and I’ll prepare my medieval armor because I’m sure this will touch a nerve—being pretty fairly penalized, save for the incredibly suspicious zero-penalty game in a win over the Lions in Week 6. Nearly all of Kansas City’s critical red zone trips Sunday against Denver were interrupted by some sort of flag. The Chiefs have had games with 13 penalties, 10 and, on Sunday, 10 again—though the Broncos also had 10 flags, for a lot more yards (147 to 69). A true Sean Payton special.
And to all of this I say: great. Not great in the schadenfreude kind of way, in which an elite team’s fan base getting its comeuppance makes me happy. But great in the sense that we finally have evidence that teams have studied and built comparatively difficult rosters both within the Chiefs’ division and around the NFL to break up their dynastic stretch.
I’m not one of those people who believe that dynasties are bad for sports, per se, but I do get concerned when they go on for so long that you wonder why other teams haven’t figured out how to stop them. When one starts to develop, and I’ll use New England’s stretch as the perfect example, opposing teams start behaving in an increasingly erratic nature in order to make up the massive perceived distance from themselves to the team routinely winning Super Bowls. It leads to firing coaches early, firing general managers early, misaligning coaches and general managers when you hire their replacements, taking massive, risky swings on potential-laden draft picks, making performative “statement” moves in free agency and so on. I would guess that when Bill Belichick saw the Jets sign Plaxico Burress to pair with the already mercurial Santonio Holmes, he was plainly overjoyed. The same with the Dolphins routinely firing their head coaches after a sliver of progress because, surely, something else was better out there.
No team, until the Bills during the Sean McDermott era, gave itself a chance of being the Patriots because of a crippling Napoleon syndrome that, based on how bad the Patriots’ operation had decayed by the end of the Tom Brady era, was primarily a self-imposed psychological ploy.
Finally, the AFC West has found its footing. Payton, Jim Harbaugh and, you know, whatever the Raiders are doing (there’s always a black–and silver?–sheep in the family). None of these coaches were mystified by the Chiefs. Payton beat them once with Russell Wilson during his first year in Denver and once again in his second year (although that 38–0 blowout was a mockery of the sport after the Chiefs had clinched their No. 1 playoff seed). The Chargers knocked Kansas City off in the season-opener. And with each matchup since, some of the best coaches in the NFL, and some of the best coordinators in the NFL who gladly traveled to the AFC West to work with Harbaugh and Payton, chipped away at the kind of game plans that would more routinely pester Patrick Mahomes. On the offensive side of the ball, the same can be said about avoiding one of Steve Spagnuolo’s classic traps.
This is how you take down any dynasty, be it athletic, political or that one bewilderingly annoying family in your home town in which all four kids ended up playing Division I sports. It takes steady pressure, concentrated over time. Not a bunch of meaningless haymakers.
And, again, I’m not saying that the Chiefs’ dynasty is over. I’m not saying the Chiefs will even miss the playoffs. (Saying so would mean depending an awful lot on the Jaguars to close out a season, right?) It's simply hitting a point where we get to question the end of the dynasty’s inevitability. When Tony Romo will, one day in a broadcast booth, be forced to fill the dead air with something other than his latest rendering of a Mahomes mythology with more references to the supernatural than Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
That’s a win for the health of the NFL. That’s a win for team building and general functionality of other franchises. That’s a win for anyone who has ever been told that things are simply the way they are. Not now. Not in the AFC West, anyway.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Why the Chiefs’ 5–5 Start Is Great for the NFL (Not Just Schadenfreude).
