{"id":660134,"date":"2026-01-07T03:54:30","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T03:54:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/660134\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T03:54:30","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T03:54:30","slug":"the-chiefs-third-place-2026-schedule-isnt-all-it-was-cracked-up-to-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/660134\/","title":{"rendered":"The Chiefs\u2019 third-place 2026 schedule isn\u2019t all it was cracked up to be"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">In addition to the ninth overall pick of April\u2019s NFL Draft, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.arrowheadpride.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Kansas City Chiefs<\/a> were set to get another benefit of their 6-11 finish: the elusive third-place schedule that is often perceived to be a significant advantage in the following season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">But that doesn\u2019t always turn out exactly like we expect.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.arrowheadpride.com\/2025\/1\/6\/24337327\/2025-nfl-opponents-chiefs-have-one-of-toughest-afc-schedules\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">A year ago<\/a>, the Chiefs ended up with the AFC\u2019s No. 1 seed after turning in a 15-2 season that set a new franchise record. Based on the previous year\u2019s regular-season records, Kansas City ended up with the 11th-hardest 2025 schedule, which included games against 10 2024 playoff teams.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">But after recording a 6-11 record this season \u2014 and completely missing the playoffs \u2014 the Chiefs will face the fifth-hardest NFL schedule in 2026, facing nine 2025 playoff teams.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">How could this happen? Several factors are at play.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">So much for the third-place schedule.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">There\u2019s one other thing to note. What if we convert each team\u2019s opponent record \u2014 the last column in the table \u2014 from a four-digit fraction to a letter grade that represents standard deviations from average? These are shown in the second column, serving the same purpose here that they do in school: providing an easy-to-understand quantitative analysis of the data. Scores with the same, adjacent or near-adjacent grades are measurably different, but not significantly different from each other. In other words, the B- grades (ranked second through fifth) aren\u2019t really that much different from the C+ and C grades \u2014 but are significantly different from the C- grades that are ranked 23rd to 26th.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Does this mean we\u2019ll stop making this comparison every season? No\u2026 not at all. There are still differences to be explored \u2014 especially when the Chiefs are near the top, while rivals like the Eagles are much closer to the bottom. But what the letter grades show us is that generally, the differences in schedule strength tend to be pretty minor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In addition to the ninth overall pick of April\u2019s NFL Draft, the Kansas City Chiefs were set to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":660135,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2063],"tags":[346,7,118,110,80177,15650,2438,2437,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-660134","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-kansas-city-chiefs","8":"tag-chiefs","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-kansas-city","11":"tag-kansas-city-chiefs","12":"tag-kansas-city-chiefs-analysis","13":"tag-kansas-city-chiefs-schedule","14":"tag-kansascity","15":"tag-kansascitychiefs","16":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115851799505093022","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}