🚨 This Didn’t Happen Overnight — The Chiefs Had Been Teetering for Weeks

In January, walking through the cigar smoke and blaring hip-hop of another victorious locker room inside Arrowhead Stadium, Kansas City Chiefs General Manager Brett Veach extolled his franchise’s comfort with the stressful. The Chiefs had just won the AFC championship for the fifth time in seven years, having ridden some combination of magic and poise to their latest palpating victory.

“The team never gets rattled,” Veach said. “We kind of know how every game is going to go. It’s going to go down to the end. We’re prepared for that. Our team relishes that and plays their best in those intense situations.”

At the time, the sentiment provided a defining thesis for the mature phase of a modern NFL dynasty. It now reads as the last gasp of a fading power, the rationale behind the end stages of this iteration of the Chiefs. Two weeks later, the Chiefs were annihilated in the Super Bowl. The following season has been an exercise in aggravation and shock, up to the moment last week when Patrick Mahomes tore his ACL and, minutes later, the Chiefs were eliminated from playoff contention.

The Chiefs’ downfall may be a blip in Mahomes’s dominance or the start of a prolonged struggle. The Chiefs will spend the winter performing an autopsy. They fell victim to a swirl of factors, from the unrelenting pressure Mahomes faced to the aging of their roster to the compounding toll of so much postseason success. In their search for answers, the Chiefs must also confront the fact their Super Bowl run last season was not so much different in quality from their 6-8 slog this season.

A chasm exists between a Super Bowl appearance and Week 15 playoff elimination. In the NFL, the margins are never as large as they appear. As they went 15-2 last regular season, the Chiefs outscored opponents by 3.5 points per game, 11th in the NFL. This year, the Chiefs have outscored opponents by 4.3 points per game, 11th in the NFL and better than likely playoff teams such as the Philadelphia Eagles, San Francisco 49ers, Los Angeles Chargers and Chicago Bears.

Advanced metrics back up the Chiefs’ relatively static performance despite an inferior record. On a per game basis, the Chiefs improved over last season in offensive expected points added and essentially stayed level on defense.

Their performance in close games has swung from one extreme to the other. The Chiefs went 11-0 in games decided by eight points or less last season. They cast their success in the clutch as vital experience after outlasting the Buffalo Bills by three points in the AFC title game. It has proved unsustainable: They are 1-7 this year in one-possession games.

That variance only struck because the Chiefs, unable to separate from opponents, left themselves exposed to it.

“When you lose close games, you search,” Coach Andy Reid said. “Sometimes it’s a penalty here. Sometimes it’s a turnover here. It’s always one little thing that determines close games. We’ve had our share of those, and you can’t have those. It could be, called the wrong play at the wrong time. We’ve all got a piece of this thing. You got to keep striving to fix it.”

As much as it stings, the Chiefs will welcome one aspect of missing the postseason. They played 21 playoff games in Mahomes’s first seven years as a starter, reaching five Super Bowls and never falling short of the AFC championship game. No other team played more than 13 playoff games over that span. They essentially endured an extra 1¼ seasons — more than seven months of physical toil and exhaustive game-planning other franchises could use on recharging, research and roster management.

“When we talk about Andy not being a dinosaur, the first thought that comes to my mind, they’ve never had a season-ending meeting on the first Monday,” said former Chiefs assistant coach Brad Childress, Reid’s close friend. “With all the extra time he has right now, he might delve into even more creativity. What else fits us? Breaking the mold a little bit.”

The Chiefs could use an update to an offense that defenses have caught up with. Reid’s spread scheme, which married principles from the West Coast offense he ran for decades and the Air Raid that Mahomes operated in college, forced opposing defenses to adapt to them. He reaped the benefit of innovating first with a quarterback who could execute anything he imagined.

As defenses evolved to suppress the Chiefs’ style, though, Kansas City’s offense — whether through schematic decay or talent limitation — failed to adapt. The Chiefs’ dominance created a defensive environment designed to stifle them, and they didn’t or couldn’t adjust.

“You’ve got to stay ahead of the game as a coach,” Reid said. “That’s every offseason. That’s the challenge. Sometimes, when you’re good for the period of time we’ve been doing well, you’re not picking very high in the draft. You make things work.”

As offenses mimicked the Chiefs by spreading the field with speed, defenses shifted toward lighter, faster players. The NFL’s best offenses this season have thrived with heavy personnel, using extra tight ends and offensive linemen to batter defenses built for speed. Offenses moved under center with greater frequency, allowing more and better opportunity for play-action passes.

Mahomes rarely played from under center this season, and when he did, the Chiefs typically faltered. Excluding fourth downs, only the Washington Commanders, Atlanta Falcons and Cincinnati Bengals ran fewer plays under center than Kansas City. When operating from under center on the first three downs, the Chiefs ranked 27th in success rate, better than only the Las Vegas Raiders, Cleveland Browns, Tennessee Titans, Commanders and New Orleans Saints.

For years, Childress said, Reid has used a particular benchmark to gauge offensive success: If his team’s rush attempts plus pass completions totaled 53 or more, he could expect to win. This year, the Chiefs went undefeated when they reached 53 — but hit the mark only four times. They went 2-8 in the 10 games they did not.

The Chiefs’ inability to control games stemmed from a shaky offensive line, which lost star guard Joe Thuney and suffered injuries this season. Mahomes’s deep passing regressed, and Childress theorized it might have been a by-product of the his constant scrambling and the hits he

“Everybody talks about defending the second play from K.C.,” Childress said, but too often instant pass rush scuttled the Chiefs’ actual play call. “It starts up front. They haven’t been up to the task, whether it’s because of injury, talent, whatever.”

As they amassed close victories last season, they benefited from good fortune but also excelled on the margins. The details they aced in 2024 turned into malfunctions this year. A prime example: Their minus-25.4 expected points added on special teams ranks 28th, ahead of only the Browns, Falcons, Arizona Cardinals and Saints.

The Chiefs’ pillars also aged out of excellence. At 36, tight end Travis Kelce provided spasms of production but lacked explosiveness as both a pass catcher and blocker. Defensive tackle Chris Jones dominated in spurts but not consistently.

The Chiefs will be a different team when they reassemble next season. Might that include their coach? Reid, 67, is the second-oldest coach in the NFL behind Pete Carroll, four years older than John Harbaugh, the third-oldest. Reid faced questions about retirement in the lead-up to the Super Bowl last season. On the day after Mahomes tore his ACL, though, Reid referenced his offseason work multiple times, sounding like a coach who intends to return.

“I can’t see him ending on an out,” Childress said. “I can’t see him ending that way. He truly enjoys it. He needs very little sleep. He’s got a great system. He’s got great assistant coaches. Could I see him going five more? Yeah. One more? Yeah. But I don’t know that he’s out after this.”

For the first time in nearly a decade, Reid will spend January regrouping. He won’t know the availability of his quarterback until summer — on Wednesday, Chiefs vice president of sports medicine and performance Rick Burkholder said the average return from Mahomes’s surgery would take nine months, give or take two months. Regardless of Mahomes’s status, Reid will face the new challenge of resetting his franchise rather than building on runaway success.

“I’m not happy about it. Neither is anybody here,” Reid said. “We strive for excellence. We try to do that every year. Things happen, though, in this league. There’s a ton of parity and sometimes you end up on the short end of it. You’ve got to go back and look at things. That can be healthy.”