As NFL enters week 11, the Kansas City Chiefs are entering unfamiliar territory. No, not their status as the No 1 seeds in the AFC or as the bookies’ favorites to win another Lombardi Trophy. But rather their ability to achieve a feat that has eluded some of the best teams to have played the game.
Once a team has gone 9-0 it is time to put talk of the postseason temporarily on hold – that is a foregone conclusion (even the Eagles’ capitulation last season from 10-1 to 11-6 didn’t cost them a play-off berth) – and turn attention to a rarer NFL feat: the unbeaten season.
I’m sure, given the choice, the Chiefs would prefer a third Super Bowl in a row, but what if it can be done without losing a single game?
But before we look to the future, it is worth noting that the fact the Chiefs have gone unbeaten so far is something of a surprise. On paper, and in reality in some games, including Sunday’s two-point win over the Denver Broncos, this has seemed perhaps the least convincing offense that Patrick Mahomes has had since becoming the starting quarterback.
Travis Kelce’s struggles at the start of the season were well documented. And while some would argue they were unfairly magnified owing to his relationship with Taylor Swift, he has managed only 499 receiving yards in nine games, with only one 100-yard game, putting him on pace to miss out on a 1,000-yard season again. His 8.3 yards per catch is comfortably the 35-year-old’s lowest mark in his career.
That said, last year he finished with only 984 yards as he led the Chiefs’ receivers and they still won the Super Bowl. In the past three games he has shown signs of being back to his dominant best, and as long as the Chiefs’ leading receiver in six of the past ten seasons remains healthy, one might argue, they will be OK.
But the issues have gone deeper, with injuries ensuring that their star quarterback has been handed attacking weapons that seem to have been little more than a rotating cast of second-rate running backs and receivers.
It shouldn’t have been like this, of course. The offense was supposed to have been bolstered by the arrival of wide receiver Hollywood Brown. But the 27-year-old former first-rounder has not played a snap all season after being placed on IR in September.
And he was brought in to complement Rashee Rice, who finished his rookie season with 938 receiving yards. Rice’s sophomore year ended in week 4, when he was hit by Mahomes as the pair tried to tackle the Los Angeles Chargers cornerback Kristian Fulton after an interception.
Their fellow wideout Skyy Moore, taken in the second round of the 2022 Draft, has missed the entire season with injury. The standout receiving option now is the 32-year-old Deandre Hopkins, who arrived before the trade deadline, but adds experience rather than youthful zest to the offense. Even then, while his talent cannot be questioned, he has not played a play-off game in five years.
Meanwhile, their RB1 is a 29-year-old who ran for 411 yards last season (a total he has already outstripped in six games with the Chiefs) and who has not had a 1,000-yard season since his 2017 rookie year; but Kareem Hunt is showing the benefits of playing behind Mahomes – he scares defenses into over planning for his structured and off-the-cuff plays, giving running backs a chance to succeed.
Of course this year that role was meant to be filled by Isiah Pacheco getting a chance to build on his breakout 2023. But he has played only one game this season because of injury, though is thought to have an outside chance of returning to the field this Sunday against the Buffalo Bills.
Such a catalogue of injury woes suggests the topic of an unbeaten season shouldn’t still be on the agenda, but it speaks volumes to the talents of Mahomes and offensive coordinator Matt Nagy that they have got the job done.
Mahomes has thrown passes to 16 different receivers (and had one reception himself). Jared Goff of the NFC’s top team, the 8-1 Detroit Lions, has thrown to 11; even Jalen Hurts of the 7-2 Philadelphia, who has missed AJ Brown, DeVonta Smith and Dallas Goedert at times this season, has thrown to only 13 different men.
Perhaps this has helped: there is no obvious weapon for opposing defenses to scheme against and shut down. It’s just Mahomes and his schoolyard smarts.
They have of course been helped by a defense that has conceded the joint-fourth fewest points through week 10, and a special teams unit that has stood tall when needed – on Sunday their victory over the Broncos came thanks to a late blocked field goal attempt.
That victory was the sort of game that can point to the fallibility or infallibility of a side, depending on which argument you wish to advance: they needed luck to win/they won when not at their best, delete as applicable. But a win is a win.
The negative arguments are all undermined by the fact that the Chiefs have made it through their first nine games undefeated. Yes, they have only occasionally been convincing but, an NFL win column is not a question of ‘How?’, simply ‘How many?’ It is also worth noting that the latest that their first defeat of a season has come with Mahomes as starter has been week six.
The Chiefs and Broncos meet again on the final weekend of the regular season, when the Mile High air will be thick with thoughts of revenge. But will the Chiefs be playing for that unbeaten season? The two weeks before then they face the Texans and Steelers in what could be classed as ‘trap’ games, especially if the No 1 seed is already lock.
But ultimately much will hinge on events in upstate New York on Sunday. Recent history suggests that the Chiefs and Bills could well meet again in the new year with something tangible more at stake. In their nascent rivalry between the sides led by Mahomes and Josh Allen, the Bills have generally had the upper hand in the regular season, while Kansas City have got the job done in the playoffs – not least in the memorable overtime win three seasons ago.
Sunday’s result is unlikely to serve as a guide for what might happen in January, but a win would put Andy Reid, Mahomes et al one step closer to yet another entry in the NFL record books
Not since the 2007 season has a team gone undefeated through the regular season. However, that year ended with the New England Patriots’ shock defeat by the New York Giants in Super Bowl XLII. And you have to go back to 1972 to find the only time a team’s unbeaten streak ended with a Lombardi Trophy: that was Don Shula’s Miami Dolphins. They remain the only NFL team to complete an undefeated season.
The last time the NFL’s last undefeated team went on to win the Super Bowl was Peyton Manning’s Indianapolis Colts in 2006-07. Their first defeat came in their tenth game. Maybe losing to the Bills on Sunday wouldn’t be so bad for Kansas City.
