The Kansas City Chiefs are now 5-5 after Week 11’s bitter 22-19 road loss to the Denver Broncos.
Seven games remain in the team’s 2025 schedule. On Sunday, Kansas City will host the Indianapolis Colts at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium, play the Dallas Cowboys at AT&T Stadium on Thanksgiving evening, return home for matchups with the Houston Texans and the Los Angeles Chargers, travel to Nashville to face the Tennessee Titans, return home for their final regular-season home game against the Broncos and close out the season at Allegiant Stadium against the Las Vegas Raiders.
Let’s take a look at the team’s current playoff picture. As we always do, we’ll use The Athletic’s playoff calculator — an update to the New York Times playoff calculator we’ve used for several years — to help us project what could happen. You can learn more about how it works by clicking here.
The Chiefs’ playoff picture
As it stands right now, Kansas City has a 57% chance to make the playoffs (down from 75% a week ago), a 10% chance to win the AFC West (25% last week), less than a 1% chance to earn the AFC’s single bye (down from 4%), and a 4% chance to win Super Bowl LX (down from 7%).
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One week ago, these numbers weren’t encouraging. But Sunday’s loss has pushed them down the mountainside. While the team still has a better-than-even chance to make the postseason, the Chiefs’ opportunity to claim a 10th-straight AFC West title is on life support — and they can pretty much kiss the No. 1 seed goodbye.
Kansas City was not only unable to help itself over the weekend, but also had no assistance from any other team. If the season ended today, the Chiefs would be in the AFC’s ninth spot; just seven qualify for the playoffs. In Week 11, only one of the eight teams ahead of Kansas City — the Chargers — had the courtesy to lose a game. Unfortunately, they lost to another team in front of the Chiefs: the Jacksonville Jaguars.
And oh, yes… the Colts didn’t win, either — but that was because they were on their bye week.
The playoff calculator allows us to assume the outcomes of remaining games and see how it changes the odds.
Let’s take a look.
How the Chiefs can make the playoffs
Yes… Kansas City is still in control of making the dance. Winning all of its remaining games will give the team a playoff berth. Losing their matchups with either the Colts or the Cowboys only causes the Chiefs to miss the postseason in about 1% of cases. Losing one game to any other AFC team would make Kansas City miss the playoffs in no more than 6% of all scenarios.
Losing two games makes it more difficult to make the postseason — but not impossible. Dropping games to Indianapolis and Dallas would give the Chiefs about a three-in-four shot at the playoffs — but most other sets of two losses would give Kansas City something around a 50/50 opportunity to make the dance.
How the Chiefs can win the AFC West
The team no longer controls its own destiny in the division race. But winning out would give Kansas City a 57% chance to win its 10th straight division title. On top of that 7-0 finish, the Chiefs would need the Chargers to lose not only to the Chiefs in Week 15, but also drop a matchup to either the Raiders, Eagles, Cowboys, Texans or Broncos. Then Denver would have to lose to Kansas City in their Week 17 rematch — and have two losses among their games with the Commanders, Raiders, Packers, Jaguars or Chargers.
As you can see, that’s not impossible. But it’s not terribly likely, either — which is why winning out only gives Kansas City about a three-in-five chance to take the division. Both Los Angeles and Denver will have byes in Week 12, so we’ll have to wait a week before either team can give the Chiefs any breathing room.
How the Chiefs can get a first-round bye
Too much has gone wrong. If the team makes the playoffs, it will almost certainly have to play in the Wild Card round. Even if Kansas City wins out, there’s only about a 1-in-25 chance it will hold the No. 1 seed.
The bottom line
The Chiefs’ postseason chances are looking more and more grim. But the team can make the playoffs without any outside help — and taking care of its own business would give it a decent chance to once again win the division. But that’s the problem: in the last two weeks, it hasn’t been easy for Kansas City to take care of business.
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