AFC playoff race: How Bills, Ravens, Chiefs, Chargers stack up

For the past few years, the AFC has basically been a three-team race. With all due respect to the other playoff teams — and with one notable exception from the Bengals — the top of the AFC has belonged to the Bills, Chiefs and Ravens. Those teams were the top three seeds in 2023 and 2024. In 2022, the Chiefs and Bills were atop the conference, and the Ravens might have been third if not for Lamar Jackson’s late-season knee injury (they were sixth).

In a league where parity is all but guaranteed, these three teams and their quarterbacks have been locks. The Chiefs have won seven straight division titles with Patrick Mahomes. The Bills have five in a row with Josh Allen. Jackson’s streak was interrupted by those two Decembers impacted by injuries, but leaving those aside, he has five division titles in six healthy years as Baltimore’s starter. When you have three teams essentially guaranteed division titles if their quarterbacks stay healthy, how could you land on anybody else to be the cream of the AFC crop?

Obviously, given their success getting past these very Buffalo and Baltimore teams in the postseason, the Chiefs are perpetually the one to beat in the AFC. If we were going to pick which of these would land the much-vaunted top seed in the conference in 2025 and earn a first-round bye, though, there are cases to be made for each of the big three. The Chiefs are the Chiefs and just won 15 games with what might have been actual magic. The Bills have the reigning MVP and play in the easiest division of the trio. And the Ravens are the analytics darling, with most advanced metrics seeing them as the best team in football over the prior two seasons, even though things didn’t end well for them in the playoffs.

Subscribe: ‘The Bill Barnwell Show’

It should be no surprise, perhaps, that ESPN’s Football Power Index (FPI) saw the race to the top seed in the AFC as a dead heat before the season. The algorithm had the Ravens, Bills and Chiefs within 2 percentage points of one another to land the top playoff seed; the Ravens at 20.4%, the Bills at 18.8% and the Chiefs at 18.4%. There was a huge drop-off to the rest of the conference, with no other team’s chances topping 8.1% (Bengals and Chargers).

Well, after one week, FPI has changed its mind. It no longer sees a three-team dead heat. There’s a fourth team in the mix and already a significant favorite to land that first-round bye. And one of those three perennial favorites is in real danger of falling out of the race for the top seed before even making it to Week 3.

Of course, I’m not FPI. Today, though, I want to use FPI’s odds and what we saw from Week 1 to get a better sense of what the race is like atop the AFC. Is there really a clear favorite? Should what happened in Week 1 shift things as dramatically as the model suggests? Which team snuck into the top four? And is it really time to believe that one of these three stalwarts might actually no longer be the favorite to win its division?

Let’s take a closer look at what happened to these teams in Week 1 and what might occur next, starting with the new favorite to win the conference by a considerable margin.

Jump to an AFC contender:
BAL | BUF | KC | LAC | Others

FPI odds of winning 1-seed before Week 1: 18.8% (second)
FPI odds of winning 1-seed after Week 1: 30.0% (first)
Difference: plus-11.2 percentage points

Talk about a dramatic swing. One play and one game can matter only so much in the very first week of the season. But the Bills pulling out a dramatic come-from-behind win over the Ravens after trailing by 15 points with under five minutes to go qualifies as a massively important victory in the AFC title race. Even with 17 weeks to go, FPI believes Buffalo’s chances of claiming the top seed are nearly twice that of any other team in the conference.

In part, that’s because the Bills might have just played one of their three toughest games of the season, alongside home matchups against the Chiefs and Eagles later this year. Before the latest edition of their rivalry with Kansas City, the Bills’ next six games are against teams that lost in Week 1 by a combined average of 10 points. FPI favors Buffalo to win all of those games by five points or more and gives it nearly a 12% chance of starting 7-0 before facing off against Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs.

That strength of schedule (or lack thereof) is a true difference between the Bills and their competition atop the AFC. Per FPI, the Bills project to face the league’s third-easiest schedule over the rest of the season. The Chiefs are up against the 10th-toughest slate, while the Ravens and Chargers are straddling league average. FPI actually has the Bills favored to win each of their remaining 16 games, though that’s not the same thing as projecting that they’ll actually win all 16.

Though the Bills have already banked that critical win over a potential rival at the top of the conference, it’s also fair to note that it wasn’t without revealing weak points for the team, especially on defense. After his 169-yard performance Sunday night, Derrick Henry has now run for 811 yards in eight games against the Bills, comfortably leaving him with more than twice as many rushing yards as any other runner against Buffalo in the Sean McDermott era. Fourth place on that list is Lamar Jackson, who added 70 yards to Baltimore’s total on the ground.

It might be fitting that the Bills saved the game by forcing a perfectly timed fumble out of Henry’s grasp because turnovers have been the sustaining force for Buffalo’s defense over the past two years. On a per-drive basis, the Bills led the league in turnover rate in both 2023 (16.0%) and 2024 (17.5%). Some of that is a product of spending the vast majority of their games playing from ahead against teams that had no choice but to pass, but it’s clear that McDermott’s defense has been able to generate gobs of takeaways.

Without those turnovers, though, the Bills aren’t a great defense by any stretch of the imagination. Strip away the drives that ended in turnovers for every team over 2023-25 and the Bills have been a below-average defense, ranking 22nd in points per possession and 26th in EPA per snap. Last season’s Broncos are an example of a defense that forced a lot of takeaways and was still really good on the drives that didn’t end with a fumble or an interception. Buffalo, though, has been a pretty mediocre defense sustained almost entirely by takeaways for the past couple of seasons.

The Bills made upgrading their defense a priority this offseason, but most of their additions simply weren’t available in Week 1. First-round pick Maxwell Hairston is on injured reserve, and free agent signings Michael Hoecht and Larry Ogunjobi are both suspended for the first six games of the season after violating the league’s PED policy. Tre’Davious White’s second spell with the Bills was delayed after he missed Week 1 with a groin injury. The one veteran exception was Joey Bosa, who forced a Jeremy Hill fumble in the second quarter of his Bills debut.

play

Schefter: ‘The road to the Super Bowl will go through Buffalo’

Adam Schefter and Damien Woody explain why the Bills are now the team to beat in the AFC.

After the spine was the strength of this defense for so many years, though, McDermott needs to coax something more out of his off-ball linebackers and safeties. Matt Milano was brought back after agreeing to a pay cut, but the 30-year-old has posted high missed tackle rates since missing most of 2023 with a broken leg. Cole Bishop and Taylor Rapp played every snap at safety against the Ravens, but both missed critical tackles on long Henry runs. Rapp was flatfooted and couldn’t even get close enough to attempt a tackle on Henry’s 46-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter.

Of course, teams can get by without a great defense when they force a bunch of takeaways and have the league’s most devastating offense, and the Bills certainly belong in that conversation. What Josh Allen and the rest of that unit were able to do against a very good Ravens defense in what seemed like a hopeless, one-dimensional spot was spectacular. The only time in the Allen era that the Bills have generated more win probability in the fourth quarter of a game was the legendary 2021 season playoff loss to the Chiefs, where Allen brought Buffalo back to take the lead multiple times only to have it snatched away by Mahomes.

In a muddled wide receivers room, it seems as if Allen’s top wideout might be second-year player Keon Coleman, who led the team in routes (44), receptions (8) and receiving yards (112) on Sunday. It seemed even more notable that the Bills were willing to go to Coleman with the game on the line, targeting him on a fade against Nate Wiggins for their two-point try down 40-38. It didn’t work, and I’m not sure getting the ball out of Allen’s hands immediately was a great process, but it speaks to how much trust Allen and coordinator Joe Brady have in their young wide receiver.

Though I would expect the Bills to win most (or all) of their games between now and the Chiefs rematch, there’s plenty to watch for here. Can the defense stiffen up against easier competition? Will Bosa stay healthy and look like a viable second edge rusher opposite Greg Rousseau? Will McDermott make any changes at safety? And after Allen carried the ball 11 times in Sunday night’s win, will the Bills try to give him somewhat of a breather in short-yardage plays against lesser competition?

FPI odds of winning 1-seed before Week 1: 20.4% (first)
FPI odds of winning 1-seed after Week 1: 16.8% (second)
Difference: minus-3.6 percentage points

It seems telling that the Ravens lost their season opener and still managed to mostly maintain their chances of coming away with the top seed. In part, that owes to FPI’s belief that this is the best team in football. The model saw the Ravens narrowly ahead of the Eagles and Chiefs heading into Week 1, and after they became the first team to drop 40 points on a Sean McDermott-led defense in Buffalo since Carson Wentz and the Colts did it in 2021, FPI only likes the Ravens more.

That might seem weird given that the Ravens lost, of course, but the model is giving Baltimore a boost for playing so well on the road against another highly ranked team. The Ravens recovered only one of three fumbles and went 1-for-3 in the red zone, the latter a surprise for the league’s most efficient red zone offense a year ago. The Ravens averaged nearly 9 yards per play, the most any team has generated against a McDermott defense since he was the coordinator for the Panthers in 2016 and went up against eventual league MVP Matt Ryan and Kyle Shanahan. If you want to pin credit for the fumbles and the red zone stops on the Bills’ defense, you’re entirely within your right to do so, but FPI sees this as a dominant performance by a truly great offense.

All of that might seem for naught because of how things ended, which is perhaps a trend at this point. To piggyback off a slightly different point my colleague Ben Solak made, the Ravens have now lost eight games where they had a win probability of at least 90% at some point in the fourth quarter during the Lamar Jackson era, the most of any team in that span.

It’s fair to mention that the Ravens have simply had a ton of fourth-quarter leads to work with over the past few years. Since Jackson took over, Baltimore has had a 90%-plus win probability in the fourth quarter of 77 different games, going 69-8 over that span. Winning 69 of 77 games is an 89.6% hit rate. Although some of the games in that span were much closer to a 100% win expectancy, you get the idea: The Ravens aren’t some dramatic outlier in terms of how often they win those games where they have late leads relative to the rest of the league.

Relative to their brethren among the perennial top teams in football, though? The Chiefs are 90-3 (.968) in those same spots over the same time span. The Bills are 83-4 (.954). The Eagles are 72-3 (.960). The Rams are 69-3 (.958). The Packers are 69-0! The Ravens get into a lot of these dominant win probability situations, which is the mark of a great team, but they rank 27th in winning percentage in those spots, below teams such as the Chargers, Raiders and Falcons — none of whom has a great reputation as a closer.

Was there some kind of trend across those eight games? Let’s run through them:

• Dec. 9, 2018: 27-24 loss to the Chiefs in overtime. This was Jackson’s fourth career start and his first career loss. In a tied game, a long punt return set up a Jackson touchdown pass to take the lead with 4:10 to go. The Chiefs then converted a fourth-and-9 with a 48-yard pass to Tyreek Hill and a fourth-and-3 with a Mahomes touchdown pass to tie the score. Jackson turned the ball over with a strip sack with 44 seconds left, but Harrison Butker then missed a kick that sent the game to overtime. There, after a Chiefs field goal, Jackson drove onto Kansas City’s side of the field before a holding call and an injury ended his night. Robert Griffin threw two deep incompletions to end the game.

• Sept. 13, 2021: 33-27 loss to the Raiders in overtime. After the teams exchanged touchdown drives in the fourth quarter, Jackson drove the Ravens into range for a 47-yard field goal to take a three-point lead with 42 seconds to go. With the Raiders out of timeouts, Derek Carr hit 20- and 18-yard completions, spiked the ball and set up Daniel Carlson for a 55-yarder to send the game to overtime. The Ravens intercepted a Carr pass in the end zone to end the opening drive of overtime, but Jackson was strip-sacked by Carl Nassib to set Las Vegas up with a short field for the winning touchdown.

• Sept. 18, 2022: 42-38 loss to the Dolphins. Up 14 points with nine minutes to go, the Ravens fell victim to the best quarter of Tua Tagovailoa’s pro career. He hit Hill for a 48-yard touchdown, and after a punt, Tagovailoa took advantage of a defensive lapse by rookie Kyle Hamilton to spring Hill for a 60-yard score and tie things up with 5:21 remaining. Jackson then drove the Ravens for a field goal to take back the lead with 2:23 to go, but Tagovailoa went 68 yards in just under two minutes before hitting Jaylen Waddle for the game-winning score.

• Nov. 27, 2022: 28-27 loss to the Jaguars. After a Gus Edwards fumble gave the Jags a short field and a score, Jackson drove the Ravens for a touchdown and 2-pointer to take a seven-point lead with 2:10 left. On the ensuing drive, the Jags converted a second-and-21 into a new set of downs, picked up 29 yards on a third-and-6 and then scored a touchdown with 18 seconds left before converting a 2-pointer to win by one.

• Sept. 24, 2023: 22-19 loss to the Colts in overtime. A Ravens safety put Baltimore up by three with 2:03 left and the ball heading their way. They barely took any time off the clock, though, owing to the two-minute warning, the Colts’ final timeout and an illegal blindside block on Nelson Agholor. Indy kicked a field goal to tie the score with a minute to go, and after Jackson got the Ravens in position for a kick to win the game, Justin Tucker’s 61-yard try came up just short. Both teams traded punts and fourth-down stops in overtime, including a frustrating drop from Isaiah Likely, before the Colts kicked a field goal with 1:05 to go to win the game.

• Nov. 12, 2023: 33-31 loss to the Browns. The Ravens led this game 31-17 in the fourth quarter and fell apart. Deshaun Watson threw a touchdown pass to make it a one-score game, at which point a Jackson pass caromed off a helmet, changed directions and bounced into Greg Newsome’s hands for a score-tying pick-six. The Browns missed the extra point, but after the Ravens punted, Watson converted first-and-15 and second-and-19 on a drive that ended with a field goal.

• Sept. 15, 2024: 26-23 loss to the Raiders. Up 23-13 with 11 minutes remaining in the fourth quarter and with the Raiders facing a second-and-20, Baltimore was in control. Gardner Minshew immediately hit two deep completions to Davante Adams to set up a Raiders field goal, though. The Ravens had a third-and-1 pushed back by a false start on Henry and punted, and after Minshew converted a third-and-17 with a pass interference penalty, a touchdown tied the score. The ensuing Ravens drive ended with a 24-yard punt out of bounds, giving the Raiders a short field for a 38-yard kick to win.

And then there’s Sunday’s loss to the Bills, where Keon Coleman caught a deflected pass on fourth down to make it a one-score game, the Bills turned a Henry fumble into a short field and a score, and after a failed 2-pointer, the Ravens punted to Josh Allen. You know the rest.

Is there a common thread between these games? Outside of allowing teams to convert on fourth down or in some very long down-and-distance spots, not really. Some came against great teams, but the Ravens lost four of these to the Raiders, Colts and Jaguars. There were late turnovers at inopportune moments here and there, but Jackson also led scoring drives to take the lead multiple times. So while there’s a perception that Jackson doesn’t come up with big plays in these losses, if anything, these irksome defeats are more on the defense than the offense.

There are other games in our collective headspace that don’t fit into this criteria. The frustration about blowing these leads is probably mixed in with some sentiment about how the Ravens have disappointed in big games, even when they haven’t had significant fourth-quarter leads to blow. They’ve fumbled in key spots against the Chiefs in the playoffs. They’ve had game-deciding 2-pointers come up short, including Mark Andrews’ drop against the Bills in the playoffs and Jackson being stuffed against the Steelers last season. There’s unquestionable skepticism that the Ravens can win when things matter most.

And yet, if you’re going to count the loss to the Bills as further evidence of that phenomenon, can you really leave out the Ravens beating the Bills by 25 points in Week 4 last season? The playoff loss to the Chiefs was heartbreaking, but the Ravens did beat the Chiefs in Week 2 of the 2021 season. They blew out the eventual NFC champion 49ers on Christmas night in 2023. And while a lesser Titans team upset them as the top seed in the 2019 playoffs, the Ravens gained a measure of revenge by beating Tennessee the following year in the wild-card round.

None of this is to say that the concerns about the Ravens are a mirage or shouldn’t be taken seriously. But the game is lopsided against them and has been for years. If the Ravens lose to another contender in the regular season, it’s proof that they can’t come through when it matters. If they beat that same team in the regular season, that game doesn’t matter because it isn’t the postseason. And while it’s totally fair to say that the Ravens have disappointed in the playoffs, it’s not really reasonable to only use regular-season losses to supplement that argument.

play

Jeff Saturday: Baltimore’s roster ‘best in the NFL’

Jeff Saturday explains why he isn’t worried about the Ravens after their Week 1 loss.

This is a very good team, and while the Ravens have the Chiefs, Rams, Texans and Lions coming up before the end of October, five of their next six games are at home. Baltimore’s schedule gets very friendly in the second half, too. The Bills have obviously jumped ahead of the Ravens by virtue of their head-to-head tiebreaker, but it’s also telling that advanced metrics such as FPI and DVOA still think the Ravens are a better football team than their foes from western New York — even with the loss.

FPI odds of winning 1-seed before Week 1: 8.1% (fifth)
FPI odds of winning 1-seed after Week 1: 15.8% (third)
Difference: plus-7.7 percentage points

The team that has unsurprisingly risen up the AFC leaderboard is the Chargers, who nearly doubled their expectation by beating the Chiefs in Brazil. Even with the Broncos and Raiders winning in Week 1, FPI also has the Chargers as notable favorites to win the AFC West after the opener, as their 46% projection ranks favorably to those of the Chiefs (24.5%), Broncos (19.7%) and Raiders (9.8%).

Why such a large boost? Well, FPI already liked the Chargers more than the Broncos and Raiders heading into the season. They were FPI’s eighth-highest-ranked squad. The Broncos were in 11th, while the Raiders started the year in 24th. Although the Broncos and Raiders won, they beat two of the worst projected teams in the NFL, with the Raiders topping the Patriots and the Broncos struggling on offense before eventually pulling away from the Titans.

Beating the Chiefs is more meaningful, both because it’s topping stiffer competition and winning a game that the Broncos and Raiders still have to play. The Chargers face the league’s 17th-toughest schedule moving forward, while the Raiders go up against the 12th-toughest slate and the Broncos face the fifth-toughest stretch.

Winning a one-score matchup with the Chiefs understandably surprised anyone who has watched a Chargers game over the past decade. How they won, though, shouldn’t have surprised anybody who was paying attention last season. Throughout the game, there was a focus on how often the Chargers were throwing the football and how that must have been an unexpected approach for the Chiefs to face given Jim Harbaugh’s history.

Look at the raw numbers and you can understand why people feel that way. The Chargers threw only 510 pass attempts last season, the fifth fewest of any offense. Even if we treat scrambles as called pass plays, just 59% of Los Angeles’ plays last season were called passes in the huddle, the 10th-heaviest lean toward the run in the NFL. This was, on first glance, a team whose identity in 2024 was exactly what we think of when we envision a Greg Roman offense: pounding the rock.

On closer inspection, though, those numbers are misleading. To start, the Chargers played at one of the slowest paces in the league, averaging nearly 31 seconds of possession time for every snap. They ran the fourth-fewest plays, which was always going to make it difficult to rack up significant passing totals.

And then, to complicate things further, the Chargers spent much of the year playing from ahead. In early downs and neutral game scripts, the Chargers threw the ball at the sixth-highest rate in the NFL. They weren’t even a balanced offense in those spots; they were a very pass-friendly team while they were getting a lead and then ate up the clock once they were on top.

Against the Chiefs, in a game where they led the entire way but never really had a dominant lead, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that Justin Herbert threw the ball a lot. The Chargers posted the third-highest early-down, neutral script pass rate in Week 1, trailing only the Chiefs and Patriots. Facing a Chiefs team that was getting used to life without Justin Reid and only had free agent addition Kristian Fulton for a handful of snaps, that approach seems entirely reasonable.

It helps that Herbert had a great game, too, going 25-of-34 for 318 yards with three touchdown passes and no picks (and adding four scrambles for 36 yards). Only one of those scrambles produced a first down, but Herbert minimized his propensity for taking unnecessary sacks while extending plays and protecting the football. As Mina Kimes noted on “NFL Live,” while the Chargers didn’t do a ton of work running the ball, the threat of play-action was still enough to create throwing lanes for Herbert, who went 9-of-11 for 169 yards using play fakes against the Chiefs.

After a frustrating end to their 2024 season and a topsy-turvy past couple of months, this had to feel like a great win. The Chargers will miss Rashawn Slater after he suffered a season-ending knee injury, but Joe Alt was excellent in his first NFL start at left tackle. He didn’t allow a single pressure on 42 dropbacks even while going one-on-one against Chiefs pass rushers roughly 83% of the time.

Najee Harris played only 11 snaps in his Chargers debut after suffering an eye injury in an offseason fireworks accident, but rookie Omarion Hampton looked solid, albeit without generating many explosives in the run game. Those chunk plays were missing after Week 2 last season, and the shift from J.K. Dobbins and Gus Edwards to Hampton and Harris was partly informed by the hope that the younger, faster players could generate more big plays on the ground.

Naturally, if you’re plotting a path to the top seed for the Chargers, it involves something close to an MVP-caliber season from Herbert. If there’s anybody outside of the usual suspects who has the talent to pull that off, Herbert would be one of the obvious choices. He doesn’t make as many highlight-reel plays as Jackson and Allen make outside of structure, but if the Chargers are winning and Herbert is dominating from inside the pocket, that might not matter.

play

Rich Eisen: Herbert looked totally in control for the Chargers

Eisen discussing Herbert

He’ll have his opportunities. The Chargers don’t have a particularly brutal schedule, but they get prime-time games against the Vikings, Steelers and Eagles, and it would be a shock if their Week 15 game against the Chiefs didn’t come under consideration to be flexed. After one victory, FPI believes the Chargers can top the Chiefs in the AFC West. From there, could Harbaugh repeat what he did in San Francisco and make it to the Super Bowl in his second season?

FPI odds of winning 1-seed before Week 1: 18.4% (third)
FPI odds of winning 1-seed after Week 1: 7.5% (fourth)
Difference: minus-10.9 percentage points

It would be an understatement to say that Friday wasn’t the start the Chiefs were hoping to have in 2025. Playing what amounted to a de facto home game as the road team in Brazil against the division rival Chargers, Andy Reid’s team fell behind early and spent the entire game trying to catch up. The Chiefs did not lead for a single second of their 27-21 loss to the Chargers, just the fifth time that has happened in a Mahomes start over the past eight years.

It’s also the second time it has happened to Mahomes’ Chiefs in consecutive games, as they didn’t lead for a single second of their blowout defeat in the Super Bowl at the hands of the Eagles. Friday’s loss wasn’t anywhere near as comprehensive, but it was the first time the Chiefs had lost a one-score game since Week 16 of the 2023 season, ending an NFL-record run of 16 consecutive victories in games decided by seven points or less.

Chiefs fans know that their team can lose in Week 1 and still thrive. You’ll remember that they were defending their Lombardi Trophy at home in Week 1 of the 2023 season and lost a frustrating game to the Lions, where they controlled play but gave up a critical pick-six to Brian Branch when Kadarius Toney had a pass bounce off his hands. They overcame that loss and ended the season repeating as Super Bowl champs.

At the same time, that team made the playoffs as a 3-seed and needed to win road games in the AFC bracket for the first time in the Mahomes era, narrowly topping the Bills and Ravens before its victory over the 49ers in Las Vegas. The Chiefs can win from the middle of the AFC pack, but there’s obviously a huge advantage to landing the top seed and a first-round bye while welcoming the rest of the league to Arrowhead for the postseason. Have they already blown that chance?

Let’s start with Friday’s game itself and what went wrong. Things weren’t as bad as the Eagles loss, when the Chiefs trailed 27-0 at halftime, but it took a foolish decision to step out of bounds by Omarion Hampton and a 59-yard fire drill field goal by Harrison Butker to get the Chiefs within a touchdown after two quarters at 13-6. There was a common thread between the offense’s struggles in the first half in both those games: It couldn’t stay on the field.

Without the consistent explosives of the Tyreek Hill era, the Chiefs have thrived by tormenting defenses on third down. Between 2022 and 2024 (excluding the Carson Wentz season-ending game against the Broncos in Week 18 last season), the Chiefs are second in third-down conversion rate behind the Bills. The Bills are a great offense on every down; in addition to converting at the highest rate in the league on third down, they lead the league in EPA per snap over the past three years on first and second downs. The Chiefs are eighth by that same metric and 17th over the past two years, when they haven’t had the Hall of Fame-caliber version of Travis Kelce.

In both the loss to the Eagles and the season-opening loss to the Chargers, the Chiefs failed to convert a single third down on offense during the first half, something that didn’t happen at all during the 2023 season or in any 2024 game before the Super Bowl. The Chiefs were 0-for-6 in New Orleans and then 0-for-7 in Brazil. When you’re relying on third downs to propel your offense and don’t convert any of them, there’s no margin for error on early downs.

Should Chiefs fans be concerned here? No. While the results were similar, the problems on third down were entirely different between those two games. In the loss to the Eagles, the Chiefs couldn’t pass protect on third-and-long to keep Mahomes upright. In the first half of the Chargers game, there were a series of unique-but-different circumstances.

Kelce and Xavier Worthy ran into each other on the opening third down, injuring the second-year wideout. Hollywood Brown dropped a curl that should have produced a first down. A pressure produced a narrow overthrow on a deep pass to Tyquan Thornton; Thornton also couldn’t break through a tackle at the sticks on a swing pass. Josh Simmons allowed an initial pressure that led to a red zone sack. All-Pro center Creed Humphrey even forgot that the Chiefs were in shotgun and dribbled a snap along the ground to Mahomes on a third-and-1. (Mahomes managed to pick up the ball and somehow deliver a screen to Brown, but it went for no gain.)

As a sign of how these issues weren’t pervasive or systematic, the Chiefs converted each of their first five third downs in the second half. They did that without their top two wideouts, as Worthy didn’t return after his injury on the opening drive and Rashee Rice was sitting out the first game of his six-game suspension. My guess is that the Chiefs weren’t planning on feeding Brown 16 targets, but by the end of the game, he was comfortably their best receiving option.

Even if the oft-injured Brown stays healthy, I’m not sure there’s a player in the lineup who the Chiefs can rely on as their winner on third down. Worthy is going to try to play through his dislocated shoulder in a brace, but it’s obviously difficult to imagine he will be anything close to 100 percent dealing with his injury. And while Kelce caught a 37-yard touchdown pass against the Chargers, it was schemed up for him as part of a fake screen-and-go concept. The 35-year-old tight end otherwise had one catch for 10 yards on 32 routes after ranking last in ESPN’s receiver scores among all players in 2024.

play

Why Chris Long doesn’t think the Chiefs are a Super Bowl team

Two-time Super Bowl champion Chris Long joins “The Rich Eisen Show” to share his concerns about the Chiefs.

Unless the Kelce of a few years ago is going to suddenly appear, I don’t think the Chiefs can count on him to create openings and carry the offense on third down. And though they have shifted toward larger personnel groupings after trading away Hill, the Chargers were able to bottle up those 12 and 13 personnel packages on Friday. By the NFL Next Gen Stats EPA model, the Chiefs succeeded on only 21% of their snaps out of 12 and 13 personnel against the Chargers, down from a 49% success rate on those snaps during the 2024 regular season.

If they are going to be an otherworldly outlier on third downs, they’ll be fine. If not? Their offense needs to adjust elsewhere. Getting their designed run game going to make life easier on early downs would help. Isiah Pacheco and Kareem Hunt combined for 41 carries and six successes on 10 attempts last week; leaning further into that ground game would reduce variance on early downs, leave Mahomes in fewer third-and-longs and create more opportunities off play-action in those 12 and 13 personnel groupings.

The Chiefs could also create more explosives, something that has been a stated goal for this offense all offseason. They narrowly missed on a couple in the first half before Mahomes hit two later on. One was a beautiful corner shot to Thornton for 38 yards to set up the field goal at the end of the second quarter. The other was a classic bit of Mahomes superhero magic, a wild fourth-down pass thrown against his body to a wide-open Brown out of structure for 49 yards, extending the game for the Chiefs.

That fourth-down conversion with five minutes left in the game was an example of how the Chiefs are both capable of anything with Mahomes and limited by what’s around him. While Mahomes managed to fend off Khalil Mack to make that play, he was immediately under pressure after Mack beat Kingsley Suamataia at the snap, preventing him from getting everything he would have wanted underneath the football.

That left side of the O-line might determine how much time Mahomes actually has to create those big plays. Simmons was inconsistent in his first start, allowing two quick pressures and what ended up being a sack to stall out a red zone drive. He was better than what the Chiefs had at left tackle last season, but Suamataia, kicking inside to guard, immediately lost to Mack on the biggest snap of the game. Opposing defenses might not be able to torment the Chiefs around left tackle this season, but if they can just pick on the left guard instead, Simmons won’t be able to fix the pass protection issues.

What might have been even more concerning for the Chiefs given the circumstances, though, was their pass defense. Herbert played a nearly flawless game, finishing with a scramble for a first down to close out the win in the fourth quarter. Herbert’s 88.9 Total QBR was the fourth-best mark of Week 1 and the sixth-best mark posted against the Chiefs’ defense in a non-Week 18 game since the start of the 2020 season.

While Steve Spagnuolo has rightfully earned a reputation for dialing up the right blitz at the right time, he never really found a way to slow down the Chargers. Herbert went 11-of-14 for 173 yards and a touchdown against the blitz on Friday, with the score coming against an all-out pressure with the Chiefs attempting to play Cover 0 behind. Jaden Hicks, entering the starting lineup this year for the departed Justin Reid, wasn’t able to hold up in man-to-man coverage out of the slot against Quentin Johnston.

The Chiefs were able to get pressure without blitzing, but just one of their 10 blitz-less pressures turned into a sack. And while they still have a pass-rush demon up front in Chris Jones, that final snap of the game exhibited how even Jones can cause the Chiefs problems. Spagnuolo commonly affords Jones the freedom to both line up where he wants in passing situations and rush through whatever gap he prefers. Out on the edge against backup right tackle Trey Pipkins III, Jones shot inside and created a pressure against Herbert — but in doing so, he gave up contain and created a scramble lane.

With the Chiefs rushing four and playing man coverage, there was nobody else with eyes on Herbert who could keep him from picking up 19 yards and ending the game. The positives and pressures Jones creates in key moments outweigh the times he has created problems for the Chiefs, but this was an example of a moment where Jones’ aggressiveness came back to bite Kansas City.

I’m not concerned about the Chiefs, which isn’t to say that they are free of problems. Losing Worthy hurts. Suamataia just might not be an NFL-caliber lineman at any position. Chamarri Conner didn’t look very good in the slot in Week 1, with Dan Pizzuta noting in his newsletter that the defensive back allowed 2.4 adjusted yards per coverage snap against the Chargers. All of these issues are temporary and/or fixable.

The problem, though, is that the Chiefs are about to face a problem both they and the rest of the league have struggled to solve. The Eagles are coming to town this weekend for a Super Bowl rematch, and while I’m hardly counting them out, the Chiefs are 1.5-point underdogs in their own house — just the second time that has happened for a Mahomes start in Kansas City. (They lost the prior game, 24-20, to the Bills in 2022.)

Losing would dump the Chiefs to 0-2, and that might close the door on their hopes of repeating as the top seed in the conference. Since 1978, just two teams have started the year 0-2 and eventually gone on to claim the top seed in their respective conference: the 1993 Cowboys (who were dealing with an Emmitt Smith holdout) and the 2003 Eagles (who started their season with games against the defending Super Bowl champ Bucs and the eventual Super Bowl champ Pats).

As someone who has repeatedly picked the Chiefs to win the Super Bowl on an annual basis, I’m keeping the faith. Beat the Eagles this week, and everything’s fine. If the Chiefs can’t gain some revenge on Philadelphia, though, they’re probably already out of the race for the top seed in the AFC. That’s going to make their postseason life much more difficult, even if they have pulled through on the road before.

Everyone else

FPI thinks that there’s about a 30% chance of one of the other 12 teams in the AFC eventually finishing with the top seed in the conference. Though it’s too early to rule anybody out entirely, the Patriots, Jets, Dolphins, Browns and Titans all combine to hold a 1.5% chance of finishing No. 1. We’re in for a fun year of chaos if any of those teams do finish atop the AFC.

After their Week 1 loss to the Rams, the Texans saw their odds of finishing as the top seed fall from 5.2% to 1.8%, leaving them as the 11th-most-likely team to claim a first-round bye. I’m not sure they should be ashamed of losing to a good Rams team in a close game, but this is another case where what happened around Houston matters. The Colts and Jaguars had two of the most impressive victories of the week. The Texans were an average team by advanced metrics last season and floated their way to the AFC South title by virtue of being in a division with three mediocre-or-worse opponents; if that division is suddenly much tougher, they will find it more difficult to go 5-1 in the AFC South again.

While the Bengals won, their narrow escape against the Browns didn’t fool FPI, which dropped them from 8.1% to 6.1%. Likewise, the Broncos didn’t impress on offense or special teams in their win over a lowly Titans team, which saw their chances of finishing atop the conference fall from 6.6% to 5.1%. The Bengals still have the highest odds outside the top four of landing the 1-seed, while the Broncos are in sixth.

play

Why Stephen A. isn’t worried about the Bengals offense

Stephen A. Smith explains why he considers the Bengals’ poor offensive performance in Week 1 to be an aberration.

Just ahead of them are the Colts, who were the biggest risers after the Bills and Chargers. FPI didn’t see much in Indy, giving them a 1.5% chance of finishing atop the AFC before the regular season, but after the blowout win over the Dolphins, that figure has risen to 5.6%. One week isn’t enough to get FPI to believe you’re really the 2007 Patriots in disguise, but in a division where nobody projects to be great, even one really impressive victory is enough to push things in your direction. Indy’s playoff projection jumped from 34% to 59.5% after the big win.

If you’re skeptical of a team with Daniel Jones riding an improved defense to the top seed in the AFC, I don’t blame you. But think back to a year like 2008, when Tom Brady tore his ACL, opening up room for a Kerry Collins-led Titans team to win 13 games and claim the top seed ahead of teams led by the likes of Ben Roethlisberger, Peyton Manning, Brett Favre and Philip Rivers. Ryan Tannehill and a rookie year Dak Prescott were the quarterbacks on top seeds in their respective conferences.

If it feels like the teams with MVP candidates at quarterbacks are the only ones with a hope of finishing at No. 1 in the AFC, I understand why. But if we continue to see weeks like the one we just saw, well, this could quickly become a truly wide-open race.