Chiefs Can Clinch AFC West Title With Week 15 Win
Entering Week 15's play, the Kansas City Chiefs' game against the Denver Broncos was in the late-afternoon slot and preceded the Los Angeles' Chargers Sunday Night Football showdown. As far as the AFC West was concerned, all Andy Reid's team could do was take care of their own business first and then hope the Miami Dolphins could help them out later on.
While the Chiefs held up their end of the bargain, the Dolphins didn't. With a Chargers win, Justin Herbert and company kept their hopes of winning the division alive. Kansas City still has greater than a 99% chance of capturing a seventh straight AFC West crown, however, so Los Angeles may be merely delaying the inevitable.
In fact, the Chiefs' mission and outcome this week are simple. If they defeat the Houston Texans at NRG Stadium on Sunday afternoon, they win the West yet again. If they get upset by the home team and the Chargers drop a game to the Tennessee Titans later in the day, the same result is reached. At 7-6, the best Los Angeles can do this year in the record department is 11-6. At 10-3 with a tiebreaker over their bitter division rivals due to beating them twice this season, Kansas City can reach that magical No. 11 mark in a matter of days.
When asked about the possibility of clinching the AFC West after Week 14's win over the Broncos, Chiefs head coach Andy Reid shot down the question. He reiterated that the Chargers still had to play, and his caution ended up being justified. Quarterback Patrick Mahomes also made it a point that his team had yet to officially clinch, but he also spoke about just how special it is to be able to do it:
“Our goal is just to continue to get better each and every week. We go into every season saying we want to win the AFC West, we want to get home field in the playoffs and we want to win the Super Bowl. We haven't done it yet, but if we win the AFC West, that is our first goal. It is special. I want to make sure that guys remember that it is special to win the AFC West.
"Our next goal is to try to establish home-field advantage. That is going to take us playing great football week in and week out. Then we will try to win the Super Bowl. That all takes building. You are not going to play your best football every week, but how can you build on your past week for the rest of the season to make sure you are playing your best football when the playoffs come around.”
Before the season, there was a great deal of local and national hype surrounding the AFC West. The division featured a young star quarterback in Herbert, a Broncos team that added a former top-five quarterback and a Las Vegas Raiders squad that won 10 games last season and seemingly improved its roster on paper. Thirteen games into the 2022 campaign, that fire has been extinguished and the West is one of the least competitive divisions in all of football. LA is hanging on for dear life, whereas Las Vegas is 5-8 and Denver's Sunday loss eliminated them from playoff contention. If the 7-6 New York Jets makes the playoffs this season, the Broncos will have the longest playoff drought in the entire league.
A seventh AFC West crown in as many years for the Chiefs would match the Los Angeles Rams of the 1970s for the second-longest division streak in league history. The only team ahead of them? The Tom Brady and Bill Belichick-led New England Patriots from the 2009-2019 seasons. This level of dominance over a single group of teams isn't normal, yet Kansas City makes relatively easy work of the division year in and year out. Being favored by double digits against Houston on Sunday, they can lock things up with three additional games to spare.
