The Chiefs got exactly the kind of response they needed in Week 9, and it showed up in the standings as much as the scoreboard. After dropping two straight and watching their grip on the AFC West slip away, Kansas City thumped the Jets and got back into the win column.
That victory didn’t put them back on top of the division - Denver’s narrow win over the Panthers kept the Broncos ahead - but it did keep the Chiefs firmly in the postseason mix. At the halfway point of the season, that matters. The playoff race is starting to take shape, and Kansas City is still in it.
Right now, the Chiefs would be in the field if the season ended today. More than that, they’d be sitting in the No. 5 spot in the AFC, which would send them on the road to Pittsburgh for a matchup with the Steelers. Given where things stood after the recent skid, that’s not a bad place to land.
The full AFC picture after Week 9 has Buffalo at No. 1 at 7-1, followed by Denver at 7-2, Jacksonville at 6-2, Pittsburgh at 6-2, Kansas City at 6-2, Cincinnati at 6-2 and New England at 5-4. Cleveland sits just outside the bracket at 5-4, with Las Vegas, Baltimore, Houston, the Jets, Indianapolis, Miami, Tennessee and the Chargers rounding out the conference standings.
That seeding would create a first-round slate of Bengals at Jaguars, Patriots at Broncos, and Bills on a bye.
For Kansas City, the bigger picture still runs through the AFC West. The Chiefs are only one win behind Denver, and that gap exists because the Broncos haven’t taken their bye yet. That changes in Week 10, when Denver is off before returning in Week 11 for games against the Raiders and Steelers in consecutive weeks.
The Chiefs, meanwhile, head to Atlanta next week before coming home to face the Cardinals. If they take care of both, the pressure stays squarely on Denver to keep pace.
DraftKings currently lists the Broncos at -140 to win the AFC West, with the Chiefs at +120. That’s not a runaway race by any stretch.
But Kansas City still has work to do if it wants to lock up a home playoff game in January. If things go sideways, the Chiefs could be staring at a playoff path played entirely on the road for the first time in the Patrick Mahomes era.
In Other News...
Chiefs Just Uncovered A New Weapon For Patrick Mahomes
The Chiefs got a much-needed lift in their win over the Jets, leaning on a balanced attack that gave Patrick Mahomes plenty of help. Mahomes finished 23 of 31 for 242 yards and two touchdowns, while Travis Kelce chipped in with four catches for 72 yards and even found the end zone on the ground. Kansas Citys defense did its part too, piling up five sacks and keeping New York out of the end zone.
What stood out most was the way Kenneth Walker III fit into the offense, turning his touches into a major problem for the Jets. He ran for 102 yards and scored three times, giving the Chiefs a versatile threat who changed the game in more than one way. For a team looking to keep its offense dangerous and unpredictable, that kind of production is exactly the sort of development that can open things up for Mahomes going forward. [Read more 🡒]
Chiefs Fans Can Only Laugh As Chargers Rivalry Keeps Getting Sadder
With the Chiefs sitting at 6-2 and coming off a 35-12 win over the Jets, Kansas City is once again in the familiar place of thinking about the postseason while the rest of the division tries to keep up. The contrast with the Chargers could hardly be sharper. Los Angeles has stumbled to an 0-8 start, and what was supposed to be a season built around expectation has instead turned into a weekly exercise in damage control.
For Chiefs fans, the rivalry has become less about scoreboard drama and more about watching a division foe sink further from relevance. The Chargers have managed only a handful of scoring plays and have spent long stretches without finding the end zone, a staggering fall for a team with this much talent on paper. Under Mike McDaniel and with Justin Herbert at quarterback, the results have been nowhere near what anyone in Los Angeles envisioned, and from Kansas Citys side, it is hard not to laugh at how lopsided the AFC West picture has become. [Read more 🡒]
Mahomes And Kelce Just Added To Their Chiefs Legacy
Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce have spent the better part of a decade turning the Chiefs passing game into one of the NFLs defining partnerships, and now theyve added another line to an already crowded legacy. The two have been tied together since 2018, with Kelce on the field for nearly every Mahomes start and the tight end continuing to stack up record-setting production along the way.
What makes this latest milestone stand out is how long the connection has lasted and how little it has faded. Mahomes and Kelce are into their ninth season together, and the chemistry between them has become such a fixture in Kansas City that it now sits alongside the leagues all-time marks for a quarterback-tight end tandem, a reminder that their story is still being written even as the records keep falling. [Read more 🡒]