The Kansas City Chiefs are still 5-4 after their Week 10 bye. Their 28-21 road loss to the Buffalo Bills in Week 9 still stings.
Eight games remain in the team’s 2025 schedule. On Sunday, Kansas City will
be on the road to face the Denver Broncos. Then they’ll host the Indianapolis Colts at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium, play the Dallas Cowboys at AT&T Stadium on Thanksgiving evening, return home 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 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 75% chance to make the playoffs (down from 78% a week ago), a 25% chance to win the AFC West (28% last week), only a 4% chance to earn the AFC’s single bye (unchanged), and a 7% chance to win Super Bowl LX (unchanged).
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Just as they were a week ago, these numbers aren’t particularly encouraging. They have fallen slightly because while Kansas City was on its Week 10 bye, the Broncos, Colts and Chargers all won their games. The probabilities might have fallen a little more, but the Bills, Pittsburgh Steelers and Jacksonville Jaguars all lost their matchups.
These are, of course, not the kinds of probabilities we’re accustomed to seeing. When we began publishing these playoff summaries on November 8 of last season, the Chiefs were 8-0 — and had a greater than 99% chance to make the playoffs, a 97% chance to win the AFC West, an 82% chance to earn the AFC bye, and a 19% chance to win Super Bowl LIX.
But as things now stand, the Chiefs are still on the outside looking in. If the season ended today, the Jaguars (also 5-4 after their 36-29 loss to the Texans on Sunday) would slip in ahead of Kansas City because of their head-to-head win over the Chiefs in Week 5.
Still, the probabilities show us there’s still a good chance for Kansas City to make the playoffs — and a fighting chance to win the division, too.
The playoff calculator allows us to assume the outcomes of remaining games and see how it changes the odds. For now, we’ll mostly focus on what’s in the team’s control; it’s still too early for complex scenarios.
Let’s take a look.
How the Chiefs can make the playoffs
As strange as it may seem, Kansas City is still in control of making the dance. Winning all of its remaining games will give the team a playoff berth. Winning seven games will also get the Chiefs in. If the Chiefs win six of their final eight games — even losing once to the Chargers and once to the Broncos, which will be the most critical matchups — they’d still have a greater than 98% chance to reach the playoffs.
But it gets significantly harder if Kansas City loses three games. In that case, the probability of making the playoffs drops to 60-75%.
Four losses — a 4-4 record down the stretch — will make things really difficult. The Chiefs would need a lot of things to fall their way to get in at 9-8. They’d have less than a 20% chance to make the playoffs.
How the Chiefs can win the AFC West
Finishing the season 8-0 would give Kansas City its 10th straight division crown. Losing one of the two Broncos games (or the Chargers matchup) would reduce that chance to something around a coin flip. Now that Denver and Los Angeles have both won their Week 10 games, Kansas City’s path to the division crown is only assured by winning out — or by both the Broncos and Chargers suffering late-season collapses.
How the Chiefs can get a first-round bye
The Chiefs’ four losses make it very difficult to earn the AFC’s top seed. Finishing 8-0 gives Kansas City just a 56% chance to secure the bye. The odds drop sharply with a single loss. Even if that loss comes to the Cowboys — an NFC team — the Chiefs’ chances fall to around 15%. A single loss to an AFC opponent makes it even less likely. Two losses? it’s not happening.
The bottom line
Kansas City’s postseason outlook is far less certain than usual at this point in the year. Still, the Chiefs can make the playoffs — and even win the AFC West — without any outside help. But their margin for error is even thinner than it was a week ago. We could say there’s a lot riding on Sunday’s game in Denver, but there’s a lot riding on all of the Chiefs’ division games..
