Why we’ll remember the 2025 Kansas City Chiefs as the NFL’s most confusing team
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Chiefs hit fourth-quarter win-probability peaks in six of their eight losses.
- Stat models suggested a 10–11 win pace, but execution produced a 6–8 record.
- Mahomes injured late; drops, penalties and predictability doomed finishes.
The finality hit in different ways, but for several Chiefs players and coaches, it arrived as they stepped into the locker room last Sunday night.
The emotions were evident and predictable, the result of the most accomplished organization in the NFL over the past seven seasons being eliminated from playoff contention and losing quarterback Patrick Mahomes to a serious knee injury.
“It’s a feeling I’ll never forget for the rest of my life,” offensive coordinator Matt Nagy said.
We’ve spent a lot of words in this space analyzing how the Chiefs got here — the fourth-quarter collapses, the penalties, the drops-turned-interceptions, the lack of a formidable run game.
But I wanted to tackle another topic: the improbability of the Chiefs being here. As in, they’re 6-8 and set to play three meaningless football games to close out a season that will stand as their worst in more than a decade, and among their most disappointing in, well, ever.
I’ll preface all of this by saying the Chiefs are here for a reason. They earned their position — staying home in January — same as they earned a 15-2 record a year ago despite the underlying metrics suggesting they were a particularly flawed 15-2 team.
That 2024 team made its best plays in the most crucial moments of a game. This one has not. This one has lost a lot of games. That part isn’t complicated.
But, man, the Chiefs really shouldn’t be stuck here — as in, traveling to Tennessee and probably better off losing their last three games than winning them, because draft picks are better NFL currency than pride over the long-term.
The numbers: The Chiefs have reached at least a 50% win probability at some point in the fourth quarter of all but two games this season: against the Chargers in the season opener and against the Bills, when they peaked at 45% and 21% in the fourth quarter, respectively.
So at some point in the fourth quarter, the Chiefs were favored to win in six of their eight eventual losses: against the Eagles (KC win probability peaked at 54%), Jaguars (80%), Broncos (73%), Cowboys (62%) and Texans (65%), and in their rematch with the Chargers (63%).
For full disclosure, I have to acknowledge there is some selectivity in the endpoints — I’m picking out the Chiefs’ peak win probability. But only some. These are fourth-quarter numbers, deep into the game, and the Chiefs were not only still in the those games, but still favored to actually win them.
And yet, 6-8.
That’s ... not how it’s supposed to work.
• Based on their peak win probability in the fourth quarter, the Chiefs should have collected 4.6 wins in those eight games. That would make them 10-4 or 11-3.
• Based on their average win probability across the fourth quarters in those eight games — how it measured on every fourth-quarter play, rather than just at their peak chance —they should have collected 2.5 wins. That would make them 8-6 or 9-5.
They earned zero. And for comparison’s sake, only one of their six wins came with the opponent ever reaching better than a 25% chance in the fourth quarter.
So, the rarity: There are only four other teams in the NFL who have reached at least a 45% win probability in the fourth quarter in at least 13 of their 14 games this season: the Broncos, Seahawks, Rams and Patriots.
Their combined record is 46-12.
The worst record among those four teams: The Rams are 11-4.
The Chiefs, once more, are 6-8.
“That’s where it’s most frustrating,” Kansas City tight end Travis Kelce said. “We’ve seen parts of this season where we are the team that I think could make a run at a championship — and then times where we don’t even deserve to be in the playoffs.”
It also hits at the question that is going to complicate the Chiefs’ evaluation of their own team:
How bad are they really?
The company they keep is upper echelon of the NFL. They built a team that put itself in position to win 13 of its 14 games. That’s part of the objective.
The main part? They failed to close out those prime opportunities. That’s where they earned their record.
The Chiefs, the team that employed Patrick Mahomes for 14 starts, have the second-worst fourth-quarter completion percentage in the NFL, at 53.5%. They have a 76.5 passer rating. The numbers were even worse when they were trailing in the fourth.
It’s not as though they could turn to a running game. They averaged 3.3 yards per carry in fourth quarters, eighth-worst in the league.
Why? How can a Super Bowl team with a Super Bowl quarterback turn could-be wins — even should-be wins — into losses at such a high rate?
Did they become too predictable late in games? I know it looked as though the Chargers knew what was coming at times last weekend, their safeties driving downhill and beating the Chiefs’ receivers in their routes.
Did the pressure get to them?
It’s a complicated formula, because it required work for the Chiefs to put themselves in a position to win games.
But it’s a formula the Chiefs now have some extra time to solve.