Arrowhead Pride
The Kansas City Chiefs now stand 5-4 after recording a 28-21 road loss to the Buffalo Bills on Sunday afternoon.
Eight games remain in the team’s 2025 schedule. After their Week 10 bye, Kansas City will be on the road to face the Denver Broncos, then 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.
As it stands right now, Kansas City has a 78% chance to make the playoffs, a 28% chance to win the AFC West, only a 4% chance to earn the AFC’s single bye, and a 7% chance to win Super Bowl LX.
To be sure, these numbers aren’t particularly encouraging. When we began publishing these playoff summaries on November 8 of last season, the Chiefs were 8-0 — and had a greater than 99% chance to make the playoffs, a 97% chance to win the AFC West, an 82% chance to earn the AFC bye, and a 19% chance to win Super Bowl LIX.
But after Sunday’s 28-21 loss to the Bills dropped the team to 5-4, plenty of fans have assumed Kansas City has no chance to even make the postseason. These probabilities show us there’s still a good chance to make the postseason — and even at two games behind Denver, there’s a fighting chance to win the division, too.
The playoff calculator allows us to assume the outcomes of remaining games and see how it changes the odds. For now, we’ll mostly focus on what’s in the team’s control; it’s still too early for complex scenarios.
Let’s dig in.
As strange as it may seem, Kansas City is still largely in control of its postseason fate. Winning all of its remaining games virtually guarantees a playoff berth. If the Chiefs win six of their final eight games — even losing once to the Chargers and once to the Broncos — they’d still have a greater than 99% chance to reach the playoffs. In fact, a 6-2 finish would almost certainly keep them in the postseason conversation, no matter which two games they lose.
But it gets significantly harder if Kansas City loses three games. In that case, the probability of making the playoffs drops to a range around 75-80%.
Four losses — a 4-4 record down the stretch —...
