This is one of the benefits of having a team good enough - or some would say "lucky enough" - to go 15-1 on the season. It was evident early on that the Chiefs were a solid team after winning 2 straight Super Bowls and I don't think anyone was discounting them this year. Nobody has ever gotten 3 Super Bowl titles in a row, so Kansas City is looking to do exactly that. I kind of lean towards fandom with KC because I have a few family members who live there and I will likely be rooting for KC this year because my Panthers absolutely suck.
When the Chiefs blew out the Pittsburgh Steelers today on Christmas, they secured home-field advantage in the playoffs. Since the next best team in their division have a record well below their own, they already won the division a month ago and also knew they were headed to the playoffs about that time as well.
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I read an article the other day that is of little consequence but due to a mere accident of scheduling, the KC Chiefs are the first team to play on 6 out of 7 days of the week of any team in the NFL for 97 years. Their Wednesday game that we just watched was the 6th day, the others were not intentionally done for the sake of making some sort of milestone, it just kind of worked out that way.
Back to the topic at hand and how Kansas City now has it on easy street for the remainder of the regular season and even if they were to forfeit or just refuse to run around on any of the plays in their last game vs. Denver, the post-season would look exactly the same for them. Even if the Broncos win that game 173-0 the Chiefs would still get a bye in the first round of the playoffs and would still get home field advantage when they do play in week 2. Such are the spoils of a team that has had an epic season losing only a single game to a team that they are quite likely to face again in the post-season.
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Now before we get too excited about how dominant the Chiefs appear to be based on their win/loss record, take a look at how many of those games are very close. The games vs. the Raiders and the Panthers stand out the most to me. These are pretty terrible teams yet the reigning Super Bowl champions barely scratched out a victory vs. both of them. The other games are mostly really close as well. But in this sport as well as all the rest of them, it doesn't matter if you win by 1 or 100, a win is a win.
The crazy thing about Kansas City this year is that they were the only team (I think) that lost all 3 of their pre-season games. I don't know if this was a prank on the part of the Chiefs to get the media spinning yarns or what, but when the games really mattered KC was on the ball. Their only loss came when they played in Buffalo and I was astounded when my father picked Buffalo to win that one and he was absolutely right.
For KC fans out there, ones that are more die-hard than I am I mean, don't get your arrogant pants on just yet. There was a season many years ago where my Carolina Panthers had won all of their regular season games and went on to the Super Bowl only to get wrecked by the Denver Broncos. What a disappointing year that was for me.
This year we are facing something that has never happened before, a three-peat. You don't get many chances at something like that. There are actually 9 different teams that have won back-to-back championships and they are the Packers, Dolphins, Steelers, 49ers, Cowboys, Broncos, Patriots, and the Chiefs. Nobody has ever pulled off 3 in a row though so the pressure is on Andy Reid to make this happen. There is some speculation that if he does in fact pull this off, that he is going to retire. Lawd knows he has enough money to do so.
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Reid, who looks like he would have a heart attack if he were to run to the corner store for more donuts, is one of the best head coaches in the history of the NFL. Can he pull off a never-been-done-before feat? Well the amount of rest he is getting his boys between now and the playoffs certainly isn't going to hurt.