The AFC West finds itself continuing its arms race against the Kansas City Chiefs for the seventh consecutive offseason since the initial emergence of Patrick Mahomes. Where some have elected to provide improved weapons for their quarterbacks, others, such as the Las Vegas Raiders, have revamped their rosters almost entirely.
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In light of the advancements that all three of the Chiefs’ divisional rivals have made throughout the offseason, Breakfast Ball‘s Mark Schlereth is now predicting that the AFC West title will finally change hands for the first time in 10 years. However, he’s not siding with what many would believe to be the obvious choice in the Denver Broncos to be the ones to do it.
“Mark it down. You think it’s going to be the Broncos. I’m going to say it’s the Chargers. They’re a physical football team, they are going to run the ball, and you look at just the slide the Chiefs have been on since 2018… They just keep sliding, they keep letting guys get away, like they lost Joe Thuney. They don’t have a wide receiver. All these things are piling up on the Kansas City Chiefs, and they continue to trickle down.”
The lack of big moves in both the draft and free agency is beginning to hinder what was once unanimously considered to be the best team in the NFL. According to the former player turned broadcaster, despite the fact that Kansas City has managed to win multiple Super Bowls throughout this slide, their scoring numbers suggest that the team could potentially bottom out in 2025.
“30.1 points per game, first in the NFL from 2018 through 2022. The last couple of years, 22.2 points per game, 16th in the NFL.”
Not only does Schlereth believe that the rest of the division has finally caught up to them, but he also asserted that the franchise will no longer see favoritism from the referees moving forward. Suffice to say, their 40-22 loss at Super Bowl LIX seemed to put the notion of the league being biased towards the Chiefs to bed.
“The refs are no longer going to be favoring the Kansas City Chiefs.”
Considering that Mahomes has been able to produce seven consecutive AFC Championships, regardless of the caliber of roster that he is given, attempting to predict when he’ll stop doing so has proven to be a fool’s errand. Nevertheless, analysts such as Schlereth will continue to do so right up until they are finally proven to be correct.
While the state of Kansas City’s roster is anything but stellar, the same was believed to be true heading into the 2024 season, where the Chiefs would go on to produce a 15-1 regular season record en route to a third consecutive Super Bowl appearance.
Simply put, perhaps it’s best to refrain from counting out the likes of Mahomes and Andy Reid, as doing so seems to be the modern-day equivalent to betting against Tom Brady and Bill Belichick.
