The Kansas City Chiefs are now 6-5 after Week 12’s exciting 23-20 win over the Indianapolis Colts.
Six games remain in the team’s 2025 schedule. On Thursday, the Chiefs will play the Dallas Cowboys at AT&T
Stadium on Thanksgiving evening. Then they’ll return to GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium for matchups with the Houston Texans and the Los Angeles Chargers, travel to Nashville to face the Tennessee Titans, return home for their final regular-season home game against the Denver Broncos and close out the season at Allegiant Stadium against the Las Vegas Raiders.
Let’s take a look at the team’s current playoff picture. As we always do, we’ll use The Athletic’s playoff calculator — an update to the New York Times playoff calculator we’ve used for several years — to help us project what could happen. You can learn more about how it works by clicking here.
The Chiefs’ playoff picture
As it stands right now, Kansas City has a 57% chance to make the playoffs (unchanged from 57% a week ago), a 12% chance to win the AFC West (up from 10% last week), less than a 1% chance to earn the AFC’s single bye (unchanged from 4%), and a 5% chance to win Super Bowl LX (up from 4%).
One week ago, we were talking about these probabilities being “pushed down the mountainside” after the team’s loss to the Broncos. Sunday’s win has edged them up a tiny bit. The team still has a better-than-even chance to make the postseason, along with measurably (if not significantly) better opportunities win the AFC West and the Super Bowl. The No. 1 seed still looks out of reach.
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While Kansas City helped itself with a win, it got only a little bit of help from other NFL action. If the season ended today, the Chiefs would be in the AFC’s 10th spot (down one position from a week ago); just seven qualify for the playoffs. In Week 12, only two of the eight teams (besides the Colts) who are now ahead of Kansas City — the Buffalo Bills and Pittsburgh Steelers — collected losses. Unfortunately, the Bills lost to the Texans, who jumped ahead of Kansas City in the playoff race. (Both the Broncos and Chargers were on byes).
The playoff calculator allows us to assume the outcomes of remaining games and see how it changes the odds.
Let’s take a look.
How the Chiefs can make the playoffs
Winning all six of its remaining games will give Kansas City a playoff berth. Losing a matchup to either the Cowboys, Raiders or Titans would only cause the Chiefs to miss the postseason in about 1% of cases. Losing one game to any other AFC team would make Kansas City miss the playoffs in no more than 6% of all scenarios.
Losing two games makes it more difficult to make the postseason — but not impossible. Dropping games to Tennessee and Dallas would give the Chiefs a little less than a three-in-four shot at the playoffs — but most other sets of two losses would make it significantly harder — below 50%. Losing its games to the Texans and Broncos, for example, would give Kansas City about a one-in-three chance to play in January.
How the Chiefs can win the AFC West
The team no longer controls its own destiny in the division race. But winning out would give Kansas City a 60% chance to win its 10th straight division title. That’s slightly better than a week ago. On top of that 6-0 finish, the Chiefs would need the Chargers to lose not only to the Chiefs in Week 15, but also drop a matchup to either the Raiders, Eagles, Cowboys, Texans or Broncos. Then Denver would have to lose to Kansas City in their Week 17 rematch — and have two losses among their games with the Commanders, Raiders, Packers, Jaguars or Chargers.
As you can see, that’s not impossible. But it’s not terribly likely, either — which is why winning out only gives Kansas City about a three-in-five chance to take the division. After Los Angeles and Denver get back on the field in Week 13, we’ll have a clearer idea of what’s possible.
How the Chiefs can get a first-round bye
Too much has gone wrong. If the Chiefs make the playoffs, they will almost certainly have to play in the Wild Card round. Even if Kansas City wins out, there’s only about a 1-in-20 chance it will hold the No. 1 seed. That’s a better chance than it was a week ago, but it’s still a long shot.
The bottom line
Sunday’s victory was certainly a step in the right direction. As long as the team keeps winning, its chances in all of these scenarios will continue to rise — and the closer we get to the end of the season, the more dramatic those changes will be. But the team’s margin of error remains small.
