Long division: Drought of back-to-back AFC West titles for Chiefs can end this season

For a franchise that owned the best record in AFL history, that became a playoff regular in the 1990s and has found a revival under caoch Andy Reid, the Chiefs have a drought that is difficult to explain.

They’ve never won division championships in consecutive years.

That should change this season. With Saturday’s triumph over the Los Angeles Chargers, the Chiefs have put themselves in a commanding position to become the AFC West winner for a second straight year.

The Chiefs (8-6) take a one-game lead over the Chargers into this week’s games. Miami visits Arrowhead Stadium with Los Angeles heading to the New York Jets. Any Chiefs victory over the final two weeks or a Chargers loss makes Kansas City the division champion.

They’ve played in four- or five-team divisions throughout their 58 years, but the Chiefs have never managed to finish first in back-to-back seasons, something the Broncos, Chargers and Raiders have accomplished since 2000 and multiple times in their histories.

Nearly every other NFL team has a streak of division titles in their background. The Patriots just clinched their ninth straight AFC East championship. Even expansion teams like the Texans, Panthers and Jaguars have won consecutive division titles at least once.

The Chiefs are the West’s ultimate one-timer. Including the West title won by the original Dallas Texans in 1962, the Chiefs have finished first nine times. Each was followed by someone else winning the division.

Over the years, the Chiefs not only haven’t repeated as division champion, they only reached the playoffs twice as a wild-card team after a title.

Winning the division guarantees a playoff spot. And the Chiefs have had fewer guarantees — the Broncos, Raiders and Chargers have each won 15 division titles — than any team in the West.

Basically, the Chiefs have constructed few stretches of serious momentum in their history — unlike the Broncos, who won West titles from 2011-15, and went to two Super Bowls in that span.

Or the Chargers, who won four straight titles beginning in 2006.

Or the Raiders, who started a three-peat in 2000.

Division-title runs have often involved quarterback stability. Peyton Manning led Denver to four of the Broncos’ five recent titles. Philip Rivers engineered the Chargers’ surge after taking over for Drew Brees, and Rich Gannon, the ex-Chief, led the Raiders’ run.

So it would be with the Chiefs. Alex Smith is in his fifth year as a starter and can go where Len Dawson, Montana, Grbac, Gannon (in KC, at least) and Trent Green never did.

This season, Smith passed Green for second place on the career victory list by a Chiefs quarterback with 49 and counting.

Now Smith has a chance to add “back-to-back division-winning quarterback” to his career narrative. He started down that path with the 49ers, starting all 16 games for the 2011 NFC West champion, and nine games for the 2012 team that went on to win the West and play in the Super Bowl. But after Smith suffered a concussion and missed a couple of games, he famously lost his starting job to Colin Kaepernick.

In the following years, the Chiefs finished first in the division; in each case, we’ve included how and why the fell short of a repeat the following year.　

1962

In their final year in Dallas, the Texans took the West and the AFL championship. A fall to 5-7-2 in a transition year in Kansas City seems like a plausible explanation for the subsequent drop-off.

1966

An 11-2-1 record gave the franchise its first division title in Kansas City, and the Chiefs went on to play in the first Super Bowl. In 1967, the Raiders rolled to a 13-1 record to easily top the Chiefs’ 9-5.

1968

The Chiefs tied the Raiders for the West title and were considered co-champs. The Raiders won a division playoff game to reach the AFL championship. The Chiefs followed with the Super Bowl-championship season but finished second in the division in 1969.

1971

The first division title as a member of the NFL ended in playoff heartbreak on Christmas night against the Dolphins. An aging team posted records of 8-6 and 5-7-2 over the next two seasons but after that suffered 13 losing seasons in the next 15.

1993

Joe Montana’s magic helped the Chiefs to the first division title in 1993, and they reached the playoffs for the fifth straight season in 1994. But Montana missed two starts with an injury; the Chiefs lost both games and finished 9-7, two games behind the Chargers.

1995

Marty Schottenheimer’s second division-championship team ended with a bitter playoff loss to the Colts. But big things are expected in 1996 as the Chiefs appeared on a Sports Illustrated cover with the Packers as Super Bowl favorites. But the Chiefs slumped to 9-7 and missed playoffs for the first time since 1989.

1997

New quarterback Elvis Grbac led the Chiefs to their third division title in five years at 13-3. But the 1998 season was a 7-9 train wreck. At one point, the Chiefs lost six straight. Injuries played a major role in Schottenheimer’s final season.

2003

Dick Vermeil’s best team finished 13-3 as the Chiefs ran away with the West behind quarterback Trent Green and running back Priest Holmes. But the 2004 Chiefs never recovered from a 0-3 start and slumped to 7-9.

2010

The Chiefs had won eight games over the previous three years, but the team of Jamaal Charles and Derrick Johnson pushed them to the top. Success didn’t last as Todd Haley was fired before the end of the 2011 season that ended 7-9.

2016

After three years of second-place finishes, the Chiefs win the West for the first time under Andy Reid at 12-4. The 2017 started promising at 5-0, but when the Chiefs lost six of seven, the division title-repeat curse seemed upon them once again. But beating the contending Raiders and Chargers over the past two games has put the Chiefs in position to follow a division title with another for the first time.

This story was originally published December 19, 2017 at 4:53 PM with the headline "Long division: Drought of back-to-back AFC West titles for Chiefs can end this season."