Heading into the 2026 season, the Kansas City Chiefs
are looking to bounce back into the elite tier of NFL teams after a 6-11 season in 2025.According to ESPN’s “Football Power Index,” a measure of team strength intended to be the best predictor of a team’s future performance,
the Chiefs rank ninth among NFL teams as we await the start of training camp in over a month.
According to Seth Walder, an analytics writer, it’s the lowest the team has ranked in eight years.
Is this the low point for the Mahomes-era Chiefs?
Kansas City enters 2026 ranked ninth in the FPI, its worst preseason ranking since 2018 — the year Patrick Mahomes took over as the starting quarterback. That season, the Chiefs opened as the FPI’s 14th-ranked team but went on to a 12-4 record and reached the AFC Championship Game, the first of seven straight AFC title games for Kansas City.
It’s not shocking to see this version of the Chiefs ranked where it is even though we now know how good Mahomes is because:
The offense’s struggles (relative to its previous highs) over the past couple of seasons.
They lost both starting cornerbacks to the Rams.
Mahomes is coming off a torn ACL and LCL in his left knee suffered last December.How does the model handle that last nugget? It technically has Mahomes as active for the team’s Week 1 “Monday Night Football” game against the Broncos right now. But the team strength forecast is driven by the win total betting market, which is surely considering some Mahomes uncertainty. Therefore, the model is implicitly baking in an elevated chance of Mahomes sitting out some time.
Three AFC teams are ranked ahead of the Chiefs: the Los Angeles Chargers, Baltimore Ravens and Buffalo Bills. It’s notable that the Denver Broncos rank 15th after hosting the AFC Championship and winning the AFC West. Ironically, the model flags Denver’s success in one-score games (12-3 record) as a red flag for regression, a similar story to the Chiefs’ falloff from 2024 to 2025.
However, Kansas City ranks seventh in the model’s “best chance to win the Super Bowl” with a 4.9% chance. When it comes to the ultimate prize, the rankings propel the Chiefs over the Chargers.
Among the 10 most likely Super Bowl LXI matchups, the Chiefs appear in just one: against the Los Angeles Rams, who recently acquired defensive end Myles Garrett from the Cleveland Browns and are coming off a 2025 season in which Garrett recorded 23 sacks, an all-time NFL record. That game has the fourth-highest likelihood (2.5%) behind a mashup of games featuring the Rams, Bills, Ravens and Seattle Seahawks.
What do you think of what ESPN’s analytics are telling Chiefs Kingdom? Are the Rams destined to win the NFC after the Garrett trade? Let us know in the comments.
