Chiefs Hit 10-Loss Mark, But This Team’s Season Is Anything But Typical
The Kansas City Chiefs’ 20-13 loss to the Denver Broncos on Thursday night officially sealed a rare and staggering milestone: a 10-loss season. For a franchise that’s become synonymous with January football and Super Bowl contention, this year has been a jarring detour from the norm.
Let’s be clear-this isn’t just another bad team limping to the finish line. The Chiefs were eliminated from playoff contention before this game, but seeing them hit double-digit losses for the first time since 2012 puts the season in historical context.
That 2012 squad went 2-14, a year before Andy Reid arrived and turned Kansas City into a perennial power. The contrast couldn’t be sharper.
And yet, despite the record, there’s something almost paradoxical about this version of the Chiefs. This might be the best 10-loss team we’ve seen in recent memory. That’s not to say anyone in Kansas City is hanging banners for moral victories-but it does speak to how strange and unexpected this season has been.
A Dynasty Derailed-For Now
For the past seven seasons, the Chiefs have been the standard in the AFC. Seven straight conference championship appearances.
Five Super Bowl trips. Three Lombardi Trophies.
And with Patrick Mahomes still in his prime, expectations entering 2025 were sky-high. This wasn’t supposed to be a rebuilding year or a transitional phase.
This was supposed to be another title chase.
But the margin for error in the NFL is razor-thin, and this year, the Chiefs didn’t have the same knack for closing out tight games. In seasons past, they found ways to win the close ones.
This year, those same games slipped away. Add in a roster with some glaring weak spots and a late-season injury to Mahomes, and the formula for success unraveled quickly.
The Most Puzzling Stat of the Season
Here’s where things get even more bizarre: the Chiefs have outscored their opponents by 36 points this season.
Read that again.
Teams that lose 10 games don’t usually finish with a positive point differential. In fact, it’s incredibly rare. According to the Pro-Football-Reference StatHead database, the Chiefs are just the 14th team in NFL history to lose 10 games and still outscore their opponents over the course of the season.
And they’re not just barely on the positive side. Their +36 point differential is the second-highest ever for a 10-loss team, trailing only the 2008 Green Bay Packers (+39).
The only other team in that club with a margin over +30? The 1990 San Diego Chargers (+34).
That tells us something important: this Chiefs team wasn’t getting blown out. They were in games.
They were competitive. They just didn’t finish.
A Blueprint for a Bounce-Back?
That 2008 Packers team offers a bit of an interesting parallel. They were coming off a 13-3 season the year before, stumbled to 6-10 in 2008, then rebounded with 11 wins in 2009 and won the Super Bowl in 2010. Sound familiar?
If Mahomes can fully recover from his leg injury-and there’s every reason to believe he will-Kansas City still has a clear path back to contention. Yes, there are holes to patch. The offensive line needs shoring up, the receiving corps has to be more consistent, and the defense, while solid in stretches, hasn’t always held up in crunch time.
But the foundation is still there. Mahomes is still Mahomes.
Reid is still one of the best minds in the game. And the core culture of winning hasn’t disappeared-it’s just been tested.
Final Word
This season will go down as a disappointment in Kansas City, no doubt. A 10-loss campaign is a long fall from the mountaintop.
But the Chiefs aren’t your typical 10-loss team. They’ve outscored opponents, stayed competitive, and still have one of the most dynamic quarterbacks in the league.
It’s been a strange year, but if history tells us anything, it’s that dynasties don’t always fall-they sometimes just take a detour. Keep an eye on the Chiefs. This chapter may be closed, but the story isn’t over.