Sitting at my desk, watching the AFC Championship between the New England Patriots and the Denver Broncos, it was a great change of scenery to see some parity in the NFL. While these two teams ruled the AFC for a good three to four-year stretch in the early 2010s, everything is still quite different compared to the days of Peyton Manning and Tom Brady fighting for a spot in the Super Bowl.

Today, the previous kings of the AFC for the last seven years, the Kansas City Chiefs, are sitting in an unusual spot: at home, coming off an 11-loss season with nine of those defeats coming in one-score games. Patrick Mahomes is on the mend after a torn ACL, and the Chiefs will undergo a retooling process for their roster this offseason.

Significant changes are ahead for the franchise, but there is no reason why the Chiefs cannot return to the AFC Championship for the eighth time since 2018, and that reason is because of the two most important figures in the organization: Mahomes and head coach Andy Reid.

Why the Chiefs can return to the NFL’s Final Four

The NFL changes every single year. Teams implode because of little, yet fatal flaws; injuries can cause devastation across a roster; that one laughing stock of a franchise could become one of the best in football within a year. There is so much that can happen, and that is the constant evolution of this league.

The Chiefs’ run of three consecutive Super Bowls is historic and unprecedented, but the way they were winning games toward the tail end of that run was unsustainable, and it kicked them in the bud this season. While there were other issues across the roster, whether it was the run game or consistency on defense, or a lack of adequate and quick-winning pass rushing, Mahomes and Reid were far from being those issues.

Some will argue that Reid needs to evolve his offense to fit the styles and schematics to become less predictable as a play-caller and designer in certain situational or sequencing aspects of the unit. Bringing back Eric Bieniemy as the offensive coordinator, with the hope of installing unique run game aspects to bolster the success rate and productivity of this area in the offense, could help with that evolution.

Then, there’s Mahomes. There is no telling how soon he will return from his knee injury. Typically, this is anywhere from a nine to 12-month recovery, which puts Week 1 or the first month of the season in serious jeopardy, but we saw what he was doing before his injury: playing some of his best of his career.

When he is healthy, Mahomes is the best signal-caller in the game. He alone can take the Chiefs to the AFC Championship. Assuming an evolution of a progressive run is implemented into Reid’s offense, there is no reason why Kansas City is competing for another championship 12 months from now.