The Kansas City Chiefs will enter the 2025 season in uncharted territory with many now doubting their ability to be one of the best teams in football.
With a Super Bowl loss to the Philadelphia Eagles still fresh in the mind, some have the Chiefs slipping back into the chasing pack this upcoming season.
Now, replicating a 15-2 regular season is tough, so there will be some regression in that aspect, but given the state of the AFC West, which the Chiefs have won for nine straight years, the Denver Broncos and Los Angeles Chargers won 10+ games and made the playoffs last season are thought to improve.
Plus, with the Las Vegas Raiders featuring Pete Carroll and Geno Smith, the AFC West might not be a cakewalk for Kansas City.
In fact, former NFL cornerback Domonique Foxworth, who appeared on ESPN’s Get Up!, believes 2025 marks the end of the Chiefs’ divisional dominance.
“I think it’s going to be a much more competitive division,” Foxworth said. “Throughout all of last season, we saw this team have significant issues, some of which they’ve tried to address, but we won’t find out if they’ve been addressed or not until the season comes.
“My feeling is that they’re going to get taken down as the champs of the AFC West. But it doesn’t mean by any stretch they don’t have a realistic chance of winning a championship again because they are the Chiefs and they still have Patrick Mahomes.”
Not winning the division isn’t the be-all and end-all for the Chiefs, and with Mahomes having a 35-5 record against the AFC West, naturally, that will eventually start to even out.
Will that be in 2025? There is growing momentum that suggests so.
However, as Foxworth stated, just because the Chiefs don’t make it 10 straight division titles doesn’t put them out of playoff contention; after all, an 11 or 12-win season would still put Andy Reid’s team in the thick of the Super Bowl hunt.
And in truth, until we see the Chiefs fall off the proverbial cliff, they will always be spoken of as one of the teams to beat in the race for the Super Bowl.
