CINCINNATI | The Chiefs used to be masters of the meaningless game. If you&#8217;re a Chiefs fan, say, 35 or older, you will remember that well. For most of the 1980s, the Chiefs were dreadful. But every year from 1980 to 1987, they won their final regular-season game.</p><p>It was uncanny, really. No matter how bad they were, they would finish off the season with that hopeful victory. They often won those games big. They destroyed Seattle to finish off the miserable 1987 season. They obliterated Denver to close out a wasted 1983. They beat the New York Jets 37-13 for one of their three victories in the lousy 1982 strike season. They crushed Baltimore to end the strange 1980 season.</p><p>After each of these victories, of course, the coach would talk about how it was something to build on. The players would talk about how they never quit on the season and could not wait to get the next year started. And for a while, many fans would indeed build up a little bit of hope &#8212; mostly false hope. The Chiefs made the playoffs just once in those eight years, and they lost 12 more games than they won, and they fired two coaches, and nothing important ever really changed. After a while, the season-ending victories became something of a local joke.</p><p>Now, here it is, more than 20 years later, and the Chiefs are back to playing utterly pointless and insignificant games at season&#8217;s end. Today&#8217;s game against the Bengals is particularly irrelevant. The game features a two-win team versus a three-win team. Both are led by backup quarterbacks who were utterly unknown when the season began. The Chiefs have one of the worst defenses in NFL history &#8212; they will probably set the record for fewest sacks in a 16-game season and, with a bad effort today, they could give up more yards than any team in the league in 27 years. The Bengals, meanwhile, have the lowest scoring offense in the NFL. Both have a bulk of frustrated fans who, given their wishes, would have their team lose today. &#8220;I wish the Bengals had gone 0-16,&#8221; the hotel manager said upon check-in.</p><p>This would probably be the <em>most</em> insignificant game in the history of the Kansas City Chiefs, except for a few key points.</p><p>1. If the Chiefs lose today, they have an excellent shot at the No. 2 pick in the draft &#8212; matching the highest draft slot in team history. The Chiefs have had the No. 2 pick three times, and two of those players &#8212; Art Still and Neil Smith &#8212; are in the Chiefs Hall of Fame (the third, Mike Bell, had 51 sacks in his notable Chiefs career).</p><p>If the Chiefs win today, they will probably have the No. 3 pick in the draft &#8212; the Chiefs have never had the third pick.</p><p>2. It&#8217;s the last game for Carl Peterson as president/general manager/CEO of the Chiefs. This has sparked any number of emotions around town, but no one would deny that this marks the end of an era. He never built a team good enough to get to the Super Bowl, but they got pretty close a couple of times and there were good times in Peterson&#8217;s 20 years as GM. He brought at least a half dozen Hall of Fame players to town &#8212; Joe Montana, Marcus Allen, Derrick Thomas, Will Shields, Willie Roaf and Tony Gonzalez. The next GM is a mystery right now; the only thing we know for sure is that the times are a changin&#8217;.</p><p>3. It could be the last game for Chiefs coach Herm Edwards. That largely will be in the hands of the new general manager &#8212; I believe Chiefs owner Clark Hunt is keeping an open mind.</p><p>You wouldn&#8217;t expect today&#8217;s meaningless game to have much to do with Edwards&#8217; future, but you never know. In 2000, the day before Christmas, the Chiefs played a final meaningless game at Atlanta. And they absolutely did not show up. The Chiefs lost 29-13, and it was apparent to everyone that the team had quit. That turned out to be the last game for head coach Gunther Cunningham &#8212; and the way the team played in that last game probably had something to do with his firing.