If the NFL regular season ended today, the Kansas City Chiefs would miss the playoffs for the first time since the 2014 season.
As it stands, the Chiefs are 6-7 with four games remaining and sitting at 10th in the AFC. If they even want a chance at making the playoffs, they must go 4-0 to end the season and reach 10-7, and then some things may still have to break their way.
For years now, the Chiefs dynasty has run the NFL and driven fans of opposing teams crazy because they have been so dominant, but for the first time in the Patrick Mahomes era, the Chiefs look mortal, and they’re showing that they bleed just like everybody else.
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The Chiefs’ Missing The Playoffs Is A Nightmare For The NFL
If Kansas City misses out on this season’s playoffs, it would be a huge hit to the NFL for multiple reasons.
The Chiefs Are So Hated That They’re Becoming BelovedÂ
Since the beginning of the Chiefs’ dynasty, they have been one of the most hated teams in the league, but that hate has generated interest and popularity that has caused overall league popularity to skyrocket.
Outside of perhaps the Dallas Cowboys, the Kansas City Chiefs are consistently the most talked-about team in the NFL.
They have been so dominant in the Patrick Mahomes era that fans often tune in just to watch them lose or to see what crazy way they’ll find to win a game.
But now that the Chiefs are having a down year, we are starting to see a narrative change from the general NFL public and fans.
They are starting to pull for the Chiefs to figure it out and get into the playoffs, because it just wouldn’t feel the same without them there.
After years of scrutiny and vilification from fans because of how dominant Kansas City has been, Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs are now getting the love and respect they have deserved for being the standard to which all teams should be held.
It’s the same thing we saw with the New England Patriots for years before them.
The Patriots were the most dominant team in football for nearly 20 years, and NFL fans were so sick of them winning that they’d watch them play just to pray they would lose.
But near the end of their dominant run, fans began to see the beauty in their dominance and high standards and appreciated them much more because of it.
Tom Brady was one of the most hated figures in the NFL, with many grasping at anything possible to discredit his name, ability, and legacy, from calling him a cheater to claiming he was carried by legendary defenses.
But near the end of his run with the Patriots, specifically after leading them to the most legendary comeback in NFL history in Super Bowl LI, the perception of Brady finally began shifting from hatred to appreciation, because at that point, not even his biggest haters could deny his greatness anymore. They just had to admire how good he was at being the best, and they had to admire how good the Patriots were at staying on top for so long.
A Super Bowl Run Without Beating The Chiefs May Feel Less Impressive
If Kansas City does miss the playoffs this season, then the AFC and the entire playoff picture are truly wide open.Â
It could be anyone’s game, but the truth is, a Super Bowl run from any team that doesn’t beat the Kansas City Chiefs or the team that beat them would feel inferior to a run put together by a team that did dethrone them.
Take, for example, the Cincinnati Bengals in 2021. They didn’t win the Super Bowl that season, but they did beat the Kansas City Chiefs to get there, and it’s been regarded as the biggest accomplishment in the history of the Bengals franchise, because beating the titan of the sport on your playoff run is the next best thing to winning the Super Bowl.
And the Los Angeles Rams, who did win that Super Bowl against Cincinnati, are highly regarded because they beat the team that had to go through Kansas City.
It’s a weird concept, but it holds weight when you step back and think about it.
For 24 years now, the AFC, and pretty much the NFL as a whole, has gone through one of these three quarterbacks and their teams:
Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, and Patrick Mahomes.
18 of the last 24 Super Bowls have featured one of those three men representing the AFC in the Super Bowl. Even more impressively, 11 of the last 12 Super Bowls have featured one of them as the AFC representative.
And somehow even more impressive than that, 20 times in the last 24 seasons, at least one of those three players and their teams have been in the AFC Championship game.
So the point here is, if you want to be the best, you are going to have to beat the best. The AFC runs through Patrick Mahomes and Kansas City now, but if there’s an odd year where they don’t make the playoffs, it just isn’t going to feel the same for whoever wins the AFC and possibly the Super Bowl.
It Is A Lost Season For The NFL If The Chiefs Miss The Playoffs
All in all, the Chiefs’ missing the playoffs would be a bad thing for the league.
You’re losing a lot of viewership and high ratings numbers because of the amount of fans who only tune in for Kansas City, and it’s just going to feel less important if the big dog of the NFL is forced to watch the playoffs from the couch because they had one bad year, when we know that if they somehow managed to have gotten in, they would likely make a lot of noise and at least win a couple of games.
But that’s life. You have to play good football and win games to get to the playoffs, two things that Kansas City isn’t doing a lot of right now, which is no one’s fault but their own.
The season isn’t over for them yet, but they have to walk a very tight rope to get into the playoffs, which is what the NFL and its fans should hope happens.