It’s truly incredible how Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs managed to reach the Super Bowl last season. For starters, despite being unbeaten for nearly the entirety of the regular season, they barely looked like themselves, with only a few convincing wins and many one-score victories.
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Secondly, the offense led by Mahomes was uncharacteristically inconsistent. The wide receiver room dropped more passes than any team in the league, and Travis Kelce, usually unstoppable in January, looked more human than ever. Yet somehow, they were just one win away from a historic three-peat.
Perhaps this is the power of a dynasty. Even when Patrick Mahomes & Co. were misfiring, they were still in the fight. But according to analyst Jason McIntyre, their run of being in the fight might be coming to an end this year.
“I think I said it the last time I hosted (The Herd) — the Chiefs aren’t going to the playoffs next year, guys,” McIntyre said bluntly.
The evidence? It starts with the numbers. “They were 12-0 in one-score games last year,” he pointed out. “Good luck duplicating that one.” Usually in the NFL, teams that go undefeated in one-score games rarely repeat it. Those wins are often built on luck, timing, and razor-thin margins — not sustainable formulas, as McIntyre implied.
Then there’s the eye test.
“In the final two games of last year, Travis Kelce looked lost,” the analyst said. “Two catches for 19 yards against Buffalo. Then in the Super Bowl — four catches for 39 yards.”
For a player with 1,810 career postseason yards, that’s a massive drop and rightly so. “I don’t want to say he looked washed — that’s a little harsh — but he’s starting to look his age,” McIntyre added.
Even Mahomes’ own optimism about Kelce’s longevity — “If this is the last ride, you would never know” — wasn’t enough to change the analyst’s mind.
“Endings aren’t always pretty,” McIntyre said. “That [the three-peat chase] was the last ride. They were going for the three-peat. And they failed.”
Beyond individual regression, the sports analyst was also looking at the road ahead, which gave him further argument material to suggest that Patrick Mahomes & Co. won’t have an encore of last season.
“You open with the Chargers. Then the Eagles, Lamar Jackson, Jared Goff, Jayden Daniels, and a trip to Buffalo,” he said. “That is a brutal stretch.”
Add to that a questionable receiver room and an offensive line that’s still figuring itself out. With a division that keeps getting deeper, the Raiders, Broncos, and Chargers all improving considerably, McIntyre’s projection for Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs feels less like a hot take and more like reality.
“I’m calling for eight or nine wins — and no playoffs,” he stated. “I know I’m in the minority, but all the numbers line up.”
He closed with a jab at fans who think Mahomes and Andy Reid alone are enough: “Fine. Take that. But history is not on your side,” before stirring the pot even further by reminding fans of the Super Bowl loser curse.
“The Chiefs beat the Eagles in the Super Bowl. What happened to the Eagles the next year? They fell apart.”
Safe to say, Andy Reid and his men have a lot of naysayers to prove wrong this season because, unlike previous years, stats and results aren’t in their favor anymore.
