The Kansas City Chiefs are undoubtedly one of the best teams in the NFL right now. However, the odds of them pulling off the “three-peat” Super Bowl are slim to none. There are so many factors that go into winning a game of football, so many things have to go your way regardless of how good your roster is.
Every crucial player on the team like Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, Rashee Rice, and Isiah Pacheco must stay healthy for the entire season, or at least the playoffs. As we can already see the “injury bug” hit the Chiefs early this year, with Pacheco fracturing his fibula in a win over the Bengals. He will be undergoing surgery sometime in week four. This will leave the Chiefs without a starting running back for a large chunk of the season. The bad news doesn’t stop there either as their wide receiver, Rashee Rice, tore his ACL when Patrick Mahomes tackled him after throwing an interception. With this in mind, many young or inexperienced players like Xavier Worthy are being required to step up and fill a very important role.
As of right now, the Chiefs have won all five of the games they have played so far. However, if you look at the box score and the reason they ended up winning these games, they could have gone either way. Football games are a war on the field between the two teams and, obviously, it takes an enormous amount of skill to pull off a win. However, there is some luck that goes into it as well, and if the Chiefs keep these close games up in the playoffs there is a very high chance they can be eliminated if certain plays don’t go their way.
In the Chiefs’ first game of the season, they took on Lamar Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens at home. The game’s final score ended up being 27-20 with the Chiefs coming out on top. However, this game came down to the wire with a last-second throw from Lamar Jackson to Isaiah Likely, who caught the pass in the back of the end zone. The officials called it a touchdown. However, after looking at the replay, it was overturned because he had one toe out of bounds. This shows how the Chiefs won week one by a toe.
Week two wasn’t any less crazy as the Chiefs took on the Bengals once again at home. The game went back and forth with ultimately the turning point of the game being when Evan McPherson missed an extra point, putting them down by one. Joe Burrow led the Bengals down the field where they could score a touchdown putting them up by two points. Then after three flags thrown against the Bengals, one of them being a pretty big pass interference play, the Kansas City Chiefs were in field goal range. This allowed Harrison Butker to kick a game-winning field goal to win the game by one point.
In week three, the Kansas City Chiefs took on the Atlanta Falcons in Atlanta. The game went back and forth, but ultimately the Chiefs were up by five. Kirk Cousins led the Falcons down the field and he threw a perfect ball to Kyle Pits in the endzone. However, they did not call the defensive pass interference that they should’ve. This led the Chiefs to get the ball back, only to end up punting it back to Kirk Cousins and the Falcons. The game went down to the wire as the Falcons ended up getting in the red zone on the Chiefs’ eight-yard line. However, they turned the ball over at 4th and 1 after being unable to gain an inch. This just shows how in this game they were only one yard away from falling apart and losing to the Falcons.
After watching the first five games of the season, I think it’s pretty safe to say that the Chiefs are pretenders rather than contenders for the Super Bowl this year. This is because even with a fully healthy team (which they don’t have) they only won by a last-minute play. This type of play is unsustainable and in only a few weeks I predict they will begin to fall apart.
