How far has an 0-2 start set the Chiefs back? The playoff odds might surprise you
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Chiefs' 0-2 start drops playoff odds from 80% to as low as 62% in betting markets.
- Only two Super Bowl teams in last 23 years started 0-2 yet both made playoffs.
- Chiefs face tougher schedule, trailing Chargers by two games in AFC West
The Chiefs trailed by 10 when Patrick Mahomes walked to the sideline and made a play-call request. Then came seven of the most prominent words in Chiefs history.
Do we have time to run Wasp?
That fourth-quarter call — 2-3 Jet Chip Wasp, officially — ignited a comeback that led the Mahomes to his first championship, a 31-20 win in Super Bowl LIV in Miami Gardens, Florida.
Nearly six years later, it is the exemplar of his career.
Comebacks.
There’s no Super Bowl LIV without one. Actually, there are no Super Bowl wins at all without comebacks. The Chiefs have trailed by double digits in all three of their Super Bowl wins this era (and their two losses, too, for that matter).
Mahomes has made a living out of transforming the worst of situations into his best. He’s 19-17 when trailing by at least 10 points at some point during a game, the only quarterback in NFL history with a winning record under those circumstances. Tom Brady, for reference because he’s always the reference point, was 36-61.
But Mahomes has not been here, under these circumstances.
He turned 30 on Wednesday, eight years in the profession as a starting NFL quarterback, and it’s growing increasingly difficult to put him in unfamiliar spots.
But we’ve landed on one: The Chiefs are 0-2 for the first time since 2014, which means they’re 0-2 for the first time ever with Mahomes.
How does that sit?
“In my eyes,” he said when I asked him, “what an opportunity. What an opportunity to prove who we are as the Kansas City Chiefs.”
It’s his commentary on the future.
It doubles as an explanation for the past.
They’re married now. So let’s talk about that opportunity.
It’s a first for Mahomes, but it’s a regular occurrence across the league. Ten teams are winless through two weeks this season alone.
It probably goes without saying it’s not exactly operating from a place of strength. But exactly how deep of a hole have the Chiefs dug? How far has the 0-2 start set them back?
Since the NFL expanded their playoff field to seven teams per conference in 2020, just five of the 43 teams to start 0-2 later bounced back to reach the playoffs. That’s about 11.6%.
That’s, uh, rough.
But the Chiefs are better than their predecessors, no? Precisely none of those 43 teams had reached the Super Bowl the year before.
Which brings up the biggest takeaway when you do the research for this exercise. It’s really rare for a team to make the Super Bowl and then start the following year 0-2. In fact, only two teams in the last 23 years have done it. So that’s just two of the past 46.
Guess what? Both of them — the 2022 Bengals and the 2015 Seahawks — made the playoffs.
That’s also why lumping the Chiefs into that 11.6% lot of teams isn’t the apples-to-apples comparison it’s been made out to be this week in the aftermath of the loss to the Eagles.
So what is the fair way to judge it?
Well, ESPN’s playoff model is far friendlier than the historical records, projecting the Chiefs’ playoff chances at 49%. (It has the Chiefs at just 14% to win the AFC West.)
The betting markets are even friendlier still, with the sportsbooks ranging from 62% to 67% implied odds of the Chiefs still playing football in January.
For an important reference point: The Chiefs’ implied odds to reach the postseason before the year began sat at 80%.
In other words, the 0-2 start has dropped their playoff chances by 13-18%.
That’s ... not much.
The intention here isn’t to reduce the panic. The Chiefs have some real problems that need to be sorted out. The running game lacks explosion, or heck, maybe it’s just backfield talent. The wide receiver room isn’t healthy, and it turns out that missing Rashee Rice and Xavier Worthy can affect some things.
The offensive line is young and unproven on the left side, and there are spots in a game in which that really pops. The now 30-year-old quarterback’s favorite weapon for his entire career will be 36 in a couple of weeks, and there are spots in a game in which that really pops, too.
But the Chiefs still have the best quarterback-head coach combination in the NFL, a combination that has never fallen short of the AFC Championship Game in seven seasons together and a combination that has far more experience in pressure situations than any pair running.
The Chiefs will get Worthy and then Rice back. And Rice, in particular, is a difference-maker. He was the best offensive skill player not named Patrick Mahomes during training camp, and it wasn’t close.
And it also helps that the bottom of the AFC playoff picture might kind of stink. Seriously, find me seven teams that will finish ahead of the Chiefs by year’s end.
OK, so maybe the point is to reduce the panic.
While also recognizing this: They’ve got to get going.
It’s a bit hypocritical to return to the history of 0-3 teams after all but dismissing the Chiefs as a fit for the 0-2 starts. But only six 0-3 teams have ever reached the postseason, and just one since 1998. Those six combined for one playoff win.
And isn’t the playoff success — not the playoff arrival — the bar anyway? The Chiefs aren’t a playoff hopeful. They are a Super Bowl hopeful.
That’s where 0-2 has more impact. Their Super Bowl odds have dropped from 11.1% before the season to roughly 6.8% today, a more precipitous drop.
The explanation is simple: The route has grown tougher. The Chargers hold a two-game lead in the division already and the tiebreaker along with it, and they have a statistically easier schedule over the next 15 weeks. (The Chiefs have the eighth-hardest remaining schedule, per FTN’s DVOA model, and the Chargers have the eighth easiest.)
In other words, the real objective, a Super Bowl, will require the Chiefs to make a move over three months — a move that they’ve made so many times over a handful of minutes.
A comeback.