Will the Kansas City Chiefs Make the Playoffs?

Let’s be real: seeing the Chiefs sitting at 6-7 this late in the season just feels weird. For almost a decade, Kansas City has lived at the top of the AFC, not hanging around the bubble like everyone else. It’s not that the era is over, but this team is in a spot it simply hasn’t been in for a long time-and you can feel the tension around it.

The numbers don’t mince words. SportsLine has the Chiefs at a 9% shot to make the postseason, and NFL.com isn’t much more optimistic. Oddsmakers are the only ones keeping the door open, mostly because nobody wants to face Patrick Mahomes. Kansas City seeing +105 to +110 to get in feels like books are saying, “We don’t know.”

And honestly, if you’ve watched the Chiefs lately, you get why the projections are this way. The 20-10 loss to Houston looked like the moment when the cracks stopped being just subtle. Mahomes had the lowest completion percentage of his career. The offense didn’t score in the first half. The receivers had another up-and-down afternoon, and a couple of late drops from Rashee Rice and Travis Kelce shut the door on any hope of a comeback. Losing Wanya Morris and Trent McDuffie didn’t help, either.

Still, it’s Mahomes. That’s the whole reason this conversation isn’t already over. He’s undefeated in wild-card and divisional games. Every team in the AFC knows exactly what it means if he sneaks into January, even with a flawed roster around him. That lingering fear is why the Chiefs’ futures odds remain surprisingly short.

But to have a real shot, Kansas City probably needs to go 4–0 to close the season. Chargers, Titans, Broncos, Raiders — none of those teams are unbeatable, and the two biggest games are at Arrowhead, where the Chiefs usually take care of business. A clean sweep gets them to 10–7. Anything less, and they’re basically depending on luck.

The real problem is the number of teams in front of them: Houston, Buffalo, and Jacksonville all hold head-to-head tiebreakers over Kansas City, which is just brutal. The Bills and Jaguars need only to split their remaining games to stay ahead, and the Texans’ remaining schedule is more favorable to finish strong. Kansas City doesn’t control much in this race.

Behind them, the Chiefs need a little help. The Chargers have a nightmare closing stretch, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see them drop multiple games. The Colts also have a tough finish that could knock them down to 9-8. Miami and Baltimore? Both need to win out, and neither team has been consistent enough to trust in that kind of final push.

So yeah, there is a path to the postseason. But it’s narrow and with several roadblocks to sidestep.

Will the Chiefs make the playoffs? The numbers lean toward no. The betting market sits somewhere in between. And then there’s Mahomes, who keeps the whole thing from feeling impossible. If Kansas City somehow finds four straight weeks of focused, undefeated football, the door is still open a bit. Until they show that, though, this feels like a team fighting uphill every single snap.