Every year during Andy Reid’s offseason training program, the Chiefs dedicate three separate days to analyzing and preparing for their AFC West rivals.
It’s a topic the Chiefs head coach briefly alluded to Wednesday but spoke to more specifically when I asked him about it in September 2022, before they played the Chargers in that season’s division opener.
“It kind of breaks it up and gives the guys something to look at,” he said. “Plus it’s a good feeder for you. Makes coaches think, makes the players think about who they’re playing.”
You study them, he added, like you’re about to play them.
Certainly, that’s a practical matter to Reid: It’s a way his players and staff can keep in tune with what’s coming, and it would figure to stir at least some tentative elements of strategy.
But it’s also part of a relentless message, a prime directive of sorts.
One that has resonated through a franchise that has won nine straight AFC West titles — after winning six in the previous 45 seasons since the AFL-NFL merger — and 54 of its last 64 divisional games.
The first goal, quarterback Patrick Mahomes reiterated Wednesday, always is to win the divisional race.
Something the Chiefs have executed so extraordinarily in this span that Reid, the fourth-winningest overall coach in NFL history, now has more AFC West championships on his ledger than any other coach.
“That’s first and foremost,” added long-snapper James Winchester, one of just two players remaining on the team (along with Travis Kelce) who was here the last time the Chiefs failed to win the West. “And then you go from there.”
The “go from there” baseline has made for quite a formula for the Chiefs, who have played in the last seven AFC Championship Games and five of the last six Super Bowls — and won three.
“It’s been something,” Mahomes said, “that has been important to us.”
Which is what makes this week such a crucial crossroads.
Because entering their game Sunday at Denver (82), that portal to the postseason is in jeopardy as never before in the Mahomes Era.
At 5-4, the Chiefs are three games behind the Broncos and two games behind the Chargers (7-3) — who also hold the advantage of beating the Chiefs in the first of their two meetings.
The implications of winning or losing Sunday’s game could hardly be more substantial. Per The Athletic’s NFL Playoff Simulator, a Chiefs victory would boost their chances of winning the division from 25% now to 38%.
With a defeat, their prospects would tumble to 7%.
Or as Mahomes put it after pondering the consequences of a loss this week: “It’d be tough to go back and get (this) one,” he said, immediately adding, “All you can do is just handle this week; that’s all you can really worry about.”
Seeing as how the Chiefs remain eighth overall for the seven-team AFC playoff bracket if the season ended today, a loss obviously also would be a blow to their overall playoff ambitions.
